#1323 School Nurse Mistake

October 4, 2024Scott Benner

Lauren shared a harrowing experience where her daughter was overdosed by a school nurse.

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Scott Benner 0:00
OmniPod, Hello friends, and welcome back to the juicebox podcast. This one is going to curl your brain up wait to hear this.

Okay, we are talking to Lauren today. She has a number of children. One of them has type one diabetes, and a crazy story about a school nurse that I will not ruin for you here, but just let me say you're going to audibly gasp when you hear her say what she says. And she's got a couple other kids who have a very rare genetic disease that we're going to talk about later has lots to do with their blood sugar, and it's incredibly interesting as well. My notes say this is my favorite episode that I've ever made. We'll see what you think. Nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink, ag one.com/juice box. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com three simple ways to support the podcast, subscribe or follow in your favorite audio app, tell somebody else about the show, use the sponsor links when you have the need. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Dexcom. Dexcom.com/juicebox get the brand new Dexcom g7 with my link and get started today. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juicebox.

Lauren 1:55
My name is Lauren. I have three children. My oldest, her name is Lacey, and she's a type one diabetic. She was diagnosed at age four, and she's nine. Now, the story that I want to talk about today is on october 3 of 2022 she was overdosed on insulin by her school nurse. The school nurse gave her 150 units of insulin when she only needed one and a half units to cover her lunch. Yeah, that's talk about that today.

Scott Benner 2:28
Lauren, I already have questions. You're in luck. Okay, let's let people in on the secret that I tell people before we start. Go ahead and introduce yourself, and then after you do that, I'll ask you a question, but I don't know what that question's going to be then, while you're introducing yourself, I've never said this before. I don't think while you're introducing yourself, I'm like, I hope I come up with something to say, but I have something to say. Okay, good. Let's start with the school nurse, because this is interesting. The person who did this, had they ever given your daughter insulin prior to that, or was it their very first time?

Lauren 3:01
So yes, so I'll back up a little bit. That morning, I drive my two girls to school and or to the bus stop, and then the bus drives them to school, and when they got out of the car to go to the bus, she had left her phone in the car, and I didn't realize it until I got home, and so as soon as I saw her phone was in the car, I called the school, and I said, you know, I have an appointment. I'll be there as soon as I can to drop the phone off. But, you know, she has a 504 plan. So, you know, we have things to fall back on. Should she not have her phone for her OmniPod? So she had had the OmniPod five at the time, which she still does, and that would just mean that if you need a correction, that, you know, she would get it via either the pen or a syringe or, you know, however it's worded in the 504 plan. And so I called, and I said, I'll be there, so if you want to wait for me, you know, we could just do it via the OmniPod instead of having you give an injection, stuff like that.

Scott Benner 3:59
And she was like, okay, and you said this to the nurse directly?

Lauren 4:03
I said it to the nurse directly. Yes, I spoke to the nurse, yep. And this is a 40 year veteran nurse, apparently, who you know has been doing this for 40 years, had worked in the hospital, had worked, you

Scott Benner 4:18
know, I'm a 52 year veteran of being alive, and I'm an idiot still, so let's see what happens. Wait, but I have a question, though, this this, I feel like you misunderstood my first question, but I want to get you back to your story as soon as I can. But the nurse that did this, not that day, but in all time in history, had that person ever given your daughter insulin in the past, only

Lauren 4:41
via the OmniPod five, not via injection or the pen, okay, yeah,

Scott Benner 4:47
okay, that's all I so they they have practice with your daughter. They know how much they usually get. She usually gets, etc, so Exactly. And so she's also accustomed to dialing the OmniPod up to one point. Five units. Yes,

Lauren 5:02
okay, go ahead. Yeah. She, she normally does the OmniPod, and was very, was very thorough with it. Knew what she was doing. So I get to school right around noonish, and she had, like, literally just given her insulin. And I looked down at my daughter's arm, and I see that she has two injection marks in her arm. And I asked her, Why do you have two marks on your arm? And she said, Well, the the syringe wouldn't hold enough to just do one, so I have to do two. That's what she said. That's what the nurse told my daughter. And so I immediately, because we're in the front and the nurse's office is just like, a couple steps away. So I open the door to the nurse's office, go in there, and I said, Why does she have two injection marks? The nurse tells me the same thing. I said, let's pull out the syringes. She pulls out the syringes, and she says, this syringe is one unit. And I look at it, and I'm like, like, my heart just drops. And I'm like, this is not one unit. This is 100 units. This is 100 unit syringe. And she goes, No, no, this is one unit. And I'm, I'm praying to God, she's, she's correct. And I sat down for a second. I start Googling, and I'm trying to find something that proves her right. Because I'm like, Please let her be right. And I'm googling, and I knew it was just a matter of time, because her blood sugar was already dropping. Yeah. So anyway, I said, let's look at their syringes one more time. And this nurse goes over to the cabinet, pulls out the syringes, looks at them, and I'm like, Are you sure that's one unit? As I'm looking at the 100 unit mark, she's like, I think I made a mistake. And I'm like, yeah. So at that point, she had been dropping, and I had been giving her gummies and gummies and gummies and trying to, trying to get her to get a little bit higher. But at one at that point that we left, it had said low. It just said low,

Scott Benner 7:04
not gonna do it. She needed, I mean, yeah, what was her insulin to carb ratio at that point? One unit covers like 1515, carbs. So 100 units would be 150 carbs, but she got 150 units.

Lauren 7:21
She got 150 so this nurse gave her not only one full syringe, 100 units. She also gave her another 50 units. On top

Scott Benner 7:30
of that, 150 times 15. Hold on a second, Lauren,

Unknown Speaker 7:37
she knew 2250

Lauren 7:39
carbs. That sounds about

Scott Benner 7:41
right. Well, that's about right. Oh, sure. Okay, I'm sorry. I have a couple of questions. Now, were you in shock? Is that why you spent time trying to prove her wrong when you knew she was

Lauren 7:50
wrong? I was completely in shock because I wanted

Scott Benner 7:55
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Lauren 9:03
I want her to be right so badly. I was like, There's no way this. Nurses gave her 150 like, you can't wrap your head around that in the moment, you know, how

Unknown Speaker 9:10
old was your daughter at that point?

Lauren 9:13
Um, she was seven. How

Scott Benner 9:14
much did she weigh?

Lauren 9:16
She weighed maybe 60 pounds at most.

Scott Benner 9:19
And you punched the nurse. How many times in the face before you left the office?

Lauren 9:23
Trust me, inside is 2020? Okay, yeah,

Scott Benner 9:27
okay. I would have been like, oh my god, this is my time. I can actually assault another person, and a jury of my peers is going to let me off. Okay, okay, so wait, so there's not enough carbs in all of the land, and she's not going to be able to eat it all anyway, and so do you hit her with glucagon immediately?

Lauren 9:46
I didn't I, the only thing I, at the moment, thought to do was to rush her to the ER. And while I'm getting her in the car, I'm noticing she's starting to, like, slump over, yeah, and I'm like, Lacy, like. See, wake up, open your eyes. Open your eyes, open it. Like the whole car, right? And I'm like, the house is closer than the hospital, so I rush to my house, and I get on the phone with her endo and the nurse, and I let them know what's going on, and they walk me through the whole glucagon thing, because I get to my house extremely quickly, and I give her the glucagon, she's still, you know, out of it, and I rushed to the hospital. And when we get to the hospital, thankfully, she's able to walk inside by a miracle, like looking back on it, I don't know how she was able to walk inside, but she was able to walk inside. They took her blood sugar, and it was like 79 at that point, I think the glucagon had started working, yeah, and however, you know, flowing through, yeah, it was, it was dropping, dropping, dropping. All night at the hospital, she was on a, like a glucose strip. I bet it was still a drop, like I was. Obviously we're not used to that. I

Scott Benner 10:59
have thought you were going to tell me you went into snakebite mode, cut her arm and sucked the insulin out of her, because, honestly, it would have been one of the things that went through my head. So I might have stuck the syringe back in and pulled and see if I could have got some of it back again. By the way, not not medical advice, because I have no idea if that would work or not. But um, I mean, so you're only three years into diabetes at that point, right? Yeah, okay, because Lauren, between you and I as now we have distance. You made a couple of tactical errors along the way. I did absolutely, yeah. Okay, so I gave your daughter 150 units of of insulin, you should have hit her with a glutagon in that moment. 100%

Lauren 11:44
I completely agree. And I think it was just the fact that I didn't want to believe that, that that's what just happened, like I could not wrap my head around that that had just happened. Are you a

Scott Benner 11:56
kind person in general? Am I a what person? Kind person I'm trying to figure out, like, I'm trying to juxtapose your reaction to my brain, and I can't find any sense in it, because I would have been shooting glucagon with one hand and choking that fcking lady with my other one. Like, yeah, and so like, I mean, listen, people can make a mistake. God bless. But 150 and how about how other kids come through there with diabetes, right? Had she ever, ever drawn up that much insulin in her life?

Lauren 12:29
I have the same questions,

Scott Benner 12:30
damn, right? You do go ahead, yeah,

Lauren 12:32
yeah. So at that point, and even to this day, Lacey is only one at that school with type one diabetes, and obviously that's for a reason. I'm sure that there were other diabetics I had gone through there and were like, you know, screw this place. But

Scott Benner 12:48
she shot so much liquid into her. If I was her, I would have stopped and thought, like, could that little pot even hold all this like, like, Do you know what I mean? Like, it's just such a I'm telling you. Can I ask you, what did, what did she do for a living after they fired her, I have no idea. I she was fired, right? If you take insulin or so final ureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G vo hypo pen. My daughter carries gevok hypopen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes ages two and above that. I trust low blood sugar emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, gevoc hypopne can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use jivo kypo pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at jivok, glucagon.com/juicebox, juicebox gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulinoma, visit gvoke, glucagon.com/risk. For safety information. She was fired, right? Um,

Lauren 14:20
yeah, and only because I went in there and I had to demand her be fired. I said, I'm not trusting this lady with my daughter. And at that point, you know, she was still treating children with their other there was no type one diabetics except for my daughter. However, she was treating other children with medications. And you know, the they wanted to keep that nurse on, they did everything they could to keep that nurse on. And I had to go to two different meetings and fight for my daughter to get that nurse out of that school. And if my daughter did not like that school as much as she did, obviously she would be out like I would have pulled her immediately. I mean,

Scott Benner 14:57
for nothing. But if your kid dies. Is that manslaughter maybe, like, I don't even know how that works, but like, she would have gone to prison. Yeah, yeah, so, and they couldn't, by the way, in my perfect world, she would have gone to prison. I don't really know the law, but in my world, firing her is like, like, the least thing,

Lauren 15:15
yep, that's the least they should do. Yep, trust me, I know it's so infuriating. And when, when the principal came in to talk to me, and she obviously doesn't know anything about diabetes, even though I have had meetings upon meetings with her about it, she didn't understand the gravity of the situation. She just didn't until I had to pretty much yell at her, and I'm not somebody who raises their voice honestly, I do not yell at people, but this, this whole situation, was just like a nightmare, and it's like, probably the one thing that you know you're worried about happening that's kind of like an irrational fear, but it actually came to light unless

Scott Benner 15:55
it happens to you, and that is less than irrational all of a sudden, yeah,

Lauren 15:59
I guess. So. Okay, so,

Scott Benner 16:00
so listen, here's an important note for people. You know, when people are like, well, I don't want to pre bolus because I'm afraid my blood sugar will drop too fast. Your daughter pre bolus 150 carbs. You didn't even give her a Snickers bar out the door. And how long until they put her on a knife? Well, how long until you hit her with a glucagon? First I did.

Lauren 16:18
I did get, I did give her a bunch of she had so many gummies.

Unknown Speaker 16:26
I know, I know.

Scott Benner 16:31
So she's eating gummy bears. You hit her with glucagon. That that, but my point is, is that bridges the gap, because insulin does not work immediately when you put it in now 150 units and a 70 pound little, pound little kid, you know, you're gonna get some quick motion, but like so you had time to hit there with the glue gun. Then you put her right back in the car and drove the

Lauren 16:50
hospital. Yeah? Well, I did the glue gun in the car. I ran inside with her in the car with the line. And I, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I was shaking like a leaf.

Scott Benner 17:02
Hey, listen, one time when Arden was little, before I knew what I was doing, her blood sugar was falling, like, really quickly, and she got, like, super, like, combative, and she's like, I'm like, oh, drink the juice. And she's like, I want ice cream. And I was like, well, we don't have ice cream. Drink juice. And we were in the car, and so I drove her home, and she's like, why are we here? And I'm like, for ice cream. She goes, that's not the high ice cream I want.

Unknown Speaker 17:27
Oh my gosh.

Scott Benner 17:28
So now I'm speeding to a like, a soft serve place. I'm not lying. I get pulled over by a cop, and in my little ass town with four cops, they're never anywhere when you need them and like so I'm flying down this road, fair enough. He pulls me over. I pull over. I say, I look at him. I go. My daughter has type one diabetes. She has too much insulin. I'm trying to get her to food. You got to let me go. And he goes after I run your license. And I'm like, No. I'm like, what? Okay, here. I said, can I get out of the car and test her blood sugar? I'm testing her blood sugar. It's in like the 40s, I think at that point, right? And he gives me my license back. I looked at him, I said, I'm gonna be speeding again. Please don't pull me over. And I got in the car and I took off. You know, I got a ticket in the mail. Are you kidding me? Motherfucker sent me a ticket. I had to go fighting. I did get out of the ticket, in case you're wondering. Wow, but yeah, he said he mailed me a ticket. I don't know who that person is, but if he's listening, you so. But by the way, anybody could be listening because a woman just messaged my brother at their job and said, Hey, are you the ROB that edits the juicebox podcast?

Unknown Speaker 18:48
Are you kidding me? Oh, my God. My brother

Scott Benner 18:52
goes, A, how do you know about that? And B, my brother's like, I've never told anybody you have a podcast. He's like, it's embarrassing. I was like, I know. And he's like, No, I'm not. And she goes, Oh, and she, you know, she, they started talking about it. But anyway, my brother's name is my other brother's name is Rob. I have two brothers. And so anyway, where are we at? Oh, okay, you're in the hospital, and they're dumping an IV into your kid with dextrose in it. For how long? Just to combat this, 150

Lauren 19:18
units, I want to say eight hours, eight hours, yeah,

Scott Benner 19:22
do you send the bill to the school?

Lauren 19:26
Well, it was wiped clean somehow, the I did, we did try to to sue her, and all the lawyers said, Oh, well, because she didn't die, you pretty much don't really have a case. And

Scott Benner 19:40
if you could go hold a pillow over that kid's head, I think we're gonna be rich, like, well, listen, I mean, she's gotta be protect. I don't know nothing about nothing, but physicians and doctors have to be protected by some good samaritan clause, which I understand. I don't feel like you could wouldn't have been my inclination to. Sewer, but I definitely would have wanted to see her lose her job.

Lauren 20:03
Yeah, yeah. No, definitely. I definitely made that happen at least. And I guess the state had picked up the case, and I'm not sure where it's at at this point, but somebody at the state looked at the looked at everything, and said, something needs to happen. Because this wasn't just like a little oversight, you know what I mean? Like, no, no,

Scott Benner 20:24
it's not just a little oversight. Also, Lauren, it's a willful decision. Like, it's so much liquid. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, so much? Yes, it really is. She's a nurse, so the measurement of units is universal through all liquid medications, right? Did she not go this doesn't seem like one and a half like Do you have any explanation for it? Well,

Lauren 20:49
when I was at that point in the nurse's office, she had said that she thought that it was a TB syringe, which I'm not exactly sure what that means. I'm assuming that a TB syringe is smaller, but even still, what I cannot fathom drawing up that much insulin and injecting a small child with it. Here's

Scott Benner 21:10
another idea, Lauren, you know insulin is dangerous, right? She had to have known that much, right? Absolutely, if you find yourself in a position where you're saying to yourself, I'm not certain if this is the correct amount. Do you not stop? You just go get let's see what happens now, exactly,

Lauren 21:28
yeah, that's what it seems like happened though, you know, it's like, you know, it really does. Listen, there's

Scott Benner 21:34
no chance she was drinking her high or something like that, right? Because that would make sense. Well, that would at least makes sense. You know what I mean? I mean, yeah, little the mothers help her. You know what I'm saying? That might help. Okay, not to say she was obviously, I have no idea who we're talking about. I'm just saying it seems like you'd have to be impaired, if you've been a nurse for 40 years to make that

Lauren 21:55
absolutely I agree. I completely agree. Okay, yeah, and she was, like she was an older lady. I'm not gonna say any names, but you know, she was an older lady who seems like she knew what she was doing, which is why I trusted her.

Scott Benner 22:09
My mom was an older lady. I wouldn't have trusted you with anything if I'm being perfectly honest with him, and I'm 10 years I'm 10 years away from you not being able to trust me. In case you're wondering. Well anyway, that's terrible. I would she contrite? Did she apologize? Or Yes, really,

Lauren 22:28
she did apologize. What she said after she said, I think I made a mistake. I'm so sorry. That was the first time. And then she just kept saying she was sorry, and she did call me later that night to check on her, and, you know, it's so like, it's so infuriating that she did what she did, and at the same time, she's calling me and apologizing, and you know, she was crying on the on the

Scott Benner 22:55
phone, a lovely person, you know, yeah, and,

Lauren 22:59
but It's also in the same at the same time. It's like, I think I would have put if I were in that position, you know, however she she continued going to the school and treating children and kind of acting like nothing happened. So mommy,

Scott Benner 23:14
my stomach hurts. How come I drank a quart of Tylenol at school today? Yeah,

Lauren 23:18
exactly. But like, who knows? You know? Like, nobody knew at that point. And if I was not there to bring her her phone, she would have just sent her right back to class after the 150 units, and she would have been gone. Let's be

Scott Benner 23:33
clear, you getting there when you did absolutely saved your daughter's life. Yeah, she would have been just so dead, like, like, there's no, exactly, no nothing. Would have got her back once the insulin was rolling, and

Lauren 23:47
they would have to figure out, you know, what had happened. And the nurse would have been like, oh, I don't know, you know.

Scott Benner 23:57
Well, they would have seen the vampire bite on her arm and maybe figured it out. Like, maybe listen, not for nothing, but not that it would have been her responsibility to but your daughter didn't do the like, Hey, I've never gotten two of these before in my life.

Lauren 24:10
I believe she did question her like, why are you giving two? And the explanation was the same as given to me. That doesn't all fit. It didn't all fit. Yeah, exactly. Hello.

Scott Benner 24:22
Can I continue to, like, sprinkle common sense on this? Because the manufacturers of insulin needles would obviously manufacture needles that don't hold enough insulin for someone to use.

Lauren 24:36
Literally labeled units. It literally says units on it. I'm

Scott Benner 24:40
only 52 I can't see without my glasses, so I don't know that part I don't understand, okay, but, but like, but I'm talking like bigger ideas, right? I'm in a room with a computer monitor, a computer monitor company wouldn't make a monitor with the image on the back of it, because I need to see it if people are regularly giving them. Insulin? Wouldn't the needles be big enough to hold the insulin? Like, that's exactly. That's a thing. Your common sense should go, hey, hold up a second. Like, you know what I mean? And I don't know if it's age or comments, I don't know what. I don't know the person, obviously. And I'm not trying to say that I do. I'm just saying big picture is a lot of confusing things in this story.

Speaker 1 25:18
Yes, you know what I mean, there is,

Scott Benner 25:22
did it have any psychological impacts on you,

Lauren 25:24
on me? I mean,

Scott Benner 25:27
have trouble leaving her with people or anything like that after that?

Lauren 25:29
Absolutely. I mean, it's always kind of been that way, and I think this just kind of made it worse, because I guess I live in a small town where there's not many people diagnosed with diabetes. And I literally know one other family who has type one, and that's pretty much it leaving her before this happened with somebody I really didn't do unless it was like my mom, who I had trained for months before, you know, sure. And so even after this, you know, I still, she's still extremely sheltered. And, you know, I'd

Scott Benner 26:04
be wrapping that kid with bubble wrap and armor. I'd be like, listen, well,

Lauren 26:09
I have three children with medical conditions, and my other two, it happens to be a genetic condition, and they are actually hypoglycemic. So I have a hyperglycemic and I have a hypoglycemic.

Scott Benner 26:21
Wait your kid. You have two younger children whose blood sugars are always higher, are always lower. Excuse me, you said hypo. I miss surgery. Okay, all right, so they're Oh, no kidding. What is that? Is that a like a diagnosable thing?

Lauren 26:36
Yes, it's, it's a long name. It's called dopamine beta hydroxylase deficiency, and only 30 people in the world have ever been diagnosed with it. And it's where your body has a complete deficiency of adrenaline and norepinephrine, 3030,

Scott Benner 26:53
yes, I'm assuming you've had your husband's tubes tied, or your tubes tied, and your husband's got like, yeah, you're not gonna

Lauren 27:00
make it as soon as we found out with genetic is, yeah, we were done.

Scott Benner 27:04
What a pairing you two are, right? Do you get along really well? At

Unknown Speaker 27:10
least we do.

Lauren 27:13
We are a great match. It's just we both happen to have a recessive variant that only a handful of people have. And, you know, that's crazy. That's just kind of how my life kind of goes. I feel like everything happens for a reason, and I'm kind of like the guinea pig in life, Lauren.

Scott Benner 27:33
There are so many people in the world this. Odds of you matching up with that boy are so slim. That's crazy, telling

Lauren 27:39
you, I'm telling you, they they said it was astronomical that we found each other and we're not related.

Scott Benner 27:48
Did they test? Did they go, Uh oh, they did. Yeah, this lady might have married her second cousin. Hold on, a second. You imagine? Can I imagine? I mean, after this story, sure. Why not,

Unknown Speaker 28:00
right?

Scott Benner 28:01
Jesus Christ, did your daughter? Sorry.

Unknown Speaker 28:08
No, I love it. So

Scott Benner 28:10
I guess are there other people in the town married to relations? No, okay, good. It's

Lauren 28:17
just the chances are higher if you're related of having the same that's what I meant by that.

Scott Benner 28:23
No, no, I knew what you meant by it. I was just thinking, like, it might be more common to marry somebody you're related to than somebody who you have, like, like, these two genetic like, matches with. It's really just

Speaker 1 28:34
incredible. Yeah, it would be, but, yeah, okay,

Scott Benner 28:37
how do you help the other two kids? What's the the treatment or the help for them, pretty

Lauren 28:41
much just give sugar. Um, it's they get hypoglycemic, especially when they're sick, so they have to, like, have sugar or carbs every like two to three hours when they're sick, during a regular day, they can't sleep longer than six ish hours, because that's when they really start to drop? How far will they drop until they're dead? Honestly? Seriously? Yeah, my son, he's two now, but June 25 of last year, I went to go wake him up, and his Dexcom said no signal. And it hadn't said no signal for that long. It had been, maybe been like 30 minutes, yeah, um, went to go wake him up, and he was limp. Checked his blood sugar, and it was like 26 I didn't know it at the time. However, he was having silent seizures, which I had, no I didn't know anything about sure, you know, called the hospital and everything. And when he came to he started having, I guess more you know you could see the seizure. So the doctor had said he had been having silent ones, and now he's having to where you can see them. I'm not really sure what that's called, but he was like biting his tongue and stuff. So, yeah, he they because they don't, they cannot get their stored glucagon. Yeah, naturally, they can't access it, because you need adrenaline to do that. That's why it's so dangerous.

Scott Benner 30:06
So this is a vigilance thing. You have to be constantly at this. Yeah,

Lauren 30:09
I have all three on dexcoms, yeah, it's yeah, it's a lot, yeah,

Scott Benner 30:15
it's a lot. How old are all three of them? Again, they're nine and

Lauren 30:20
nine, six and two. Oh, my God.

Scott Benner 30:22
So what's the plan? You're just gonna, like, go out for cigarettes and not come back. What do you what do you think they're doing? You're gonna be an old lady when you're 20 more years. People are gonna be like, That's Lauren. What is she 80? She's like, No, she's 45 like, Oh, no kidding.

Unknown Speaker 30:41
It's her kids.

Scott Benner 30:41
Your kids are dragging her down. Like she actually kept them alive. It's insane. Like, seriously, though, like, not to be a bummer, but you did come on and talk about the lady trying to, like, off your kid. Yeah, it's already in your head, right? I'm going to send them away. They're going to fall asleep and they're not going to wake up.

Lauren 30:59
Absolutely. I don't even think about sending them away. To be completely honest with you, honestly, my younger two would not be here if I was not completely like because with their condition, and I didn't know this till afterwards, of course, but with their condition in the third trimester, your body or you need norepinephrine in order to continue the third trimester. And so I did have two stillbirths in the third trimester, after I had my oldest, which now we know is due to this condition. So like every single aspect, like all three of my children, would be dead if, if there was no intervention, like Lacey with a type one, and then my youngest two with this condition. They had to have emergency C section in order to be, you know, alive.

Scott Benner 31:45
Tell me you've had five pregnancies, two of them ended in the third trimester with a stillbirth. Yes, yes. Jesus, are you okay?

Lauren 31:54
Seriously, I'm not, but I'm hanging in there. I'm not,

Scott Benner 31:56
but I'm hanging in there. That's the most honest goddamn answer anybody's ever given to that question? No, Scott, actually, I'm not okay.

Unknown Speaker 32:05
I mean, would you be but no, I

Scott Benner 32:07
wouldn't be. That's why I asked. That's why I asked. So therapy? Do you see an actual psychiatrist? Does one follow you around all day? Like, how do you deal you drink? Are you a drinker? Lauren, are you putting them away? No. What's going on. I

Lauren 32:21
think my kids kind of keep me so busy that it's like, you know, I don't really have time to even think about other things. But, like, honestly, no, I did do therapy for for a while, and, you know, that's why I'm here today.

Scott Benner 32:37
Okay, your husband is he rich, handsome, got a really big like, what's the deal? Like, is something is making you happy? Or are you looking at him thinking I could have picked someone else? Like,

Lauren 32:50
he's a very good guy. He is extremely smart. No, he, I've known him since middle school. And, yeah, we, we're just, you know, like I said, I feel like everything happens for a reason. So I feel like something has, has to be at the end of this, you know, like, Lauren's

Scott Benner 33:06
down to Lauren. How old are you? How old are you? I'm 31 you're 31 and you're down to, there better be a Jesus at the end. And he better put me, yeah, there better be like, I better go live in a nice, like, maybe a park setting. I would like a castle. I'm telling you. God, damn, 31 years old and you're like, you better be can gift at the end of this.

Speaker 1 33:35
Oh, my god, yeah, my No, I

Scott Benner 33:42
Why am I doing this? How did the kids I'm sweating, I'm laughing so hard, it's ridiculous. All I can picture is you walking around muttering to yourself in the quiet moments.

Lauren 33:57
You must have a camera.

Scott Benner 33:58
Oh no. I just know people. Learn, and I understand implications of things the kids, did they know how screwed up things are, or do they live pretty normally.

Lauren 34:09
They don't have any kind of, like, other issues other than, you know, shutting off. Yeah. I mean, as as far as you know, cognitively, they are completely, quote, unquote, normal, but they have to have a Dexcom, and they complain about that. They understand, and I've tried to explain as much as I could.

Scott Benner 34:31
So what's their understanding of the eating thing? Because you said sugar specifically, but could it be any carbohydrates?

Lauren 34:36
Yeah, actually, like, carbs are better for, like, when they're sleeping. Yeah, yeah, it takes longer, like starchy stuff takes longer to, you know, break down. But

Scott Benner 34:47
is this having an impact on their weight? Is to the point where it's not healthy amount of calories? Or do you have that figured out?

Lauren 34:53
Yes, they have, like, a sort of a little bit of a faster metabolism. And as far as the research. Search goes. There's not, there's not a lot of research at all, but the but what I can find is their metal metabolism seems to be a little bit faster than the average, and that's why they're able to keep up there. Because if you think of stimulants, stimulants stimulate, you know, norepinephrine and adrenaline in your body. And because they lack that, there has to be some kind of other mechanism, you know, coming into play. Otherwise they would just be obese. You know,

Scott Benner 35:28
how did you figure this out in such a small town? Did you have to go to a children's hospital? Or were they actually able to figure it out there,

Lauren 35:34
after multiple so many hospital visits, they referred us to a pediatric geneticist. We live in Florida. So this was in Orlando that they were able to figure out what was going on after they did after we were cleared from genetic, you know, things, I asked to go further, and I say, Could we just do a, like, a whole, you know, Genome Sequencing thing? And the geneticist was like, I don't think we're going to find anything, but, you know, I can try to push insurance to see if we'll cover it. And I was like, please. And because I did that, you know, she she called me back, and she was like, You will not believe what I found. And she was in shock,

Scott Benner 36:13
I bet I want to look it up. I want to know how to spell it. I want to know how to spell it again. But first I opened up a Google page, and I typed in what is. Then I was going to ask you to spell the the thing, sure, yeah. Before you do, let's look at what other people have been googling. What is CTE? I'm going to blame the Tom Brady roast for that. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 36:38
okay.

Scott Benner 36:38
What is Hoda? Is she not like the person from, like a TV show?

Lauren 36:43
Oh, yeah, she's from, yeah, that morning show, right? Yeah. What

Scott Benner 36:47
is my IP address? Oh, what is Doge, D, O, G, E, that's a, like, Bitcoin kind of a thing. I

Lauren 36:56
right, yeah.

Scott Benner 36:57
What is Ramadan?

Unknown Speaker 36:59
What is today.

Scott Benner 37:01
You're telling you're telling me that the way some people figure out the date is to write into Google, what is today. What is today. I want to say right now, if you do that, stop listening to the podcast. I don't want you as a listener. Okay,

Lauren 37:16
what is the be giving insulin? If that's what you're Googling, yeah,

Scott Benner 37:19
if you're Googling what is today? You shouldn't be giving people medication. There's a calendar. Also, there's 1000 better ways to phrase that. What is the weather? What is the weather today? Also, I don't agree with that. I like looking outside if you wanna know what the weather is, what is mewing and what is a solar eclipse? Interesting. Do you know what mewing is? Well, so

Lauren 37:46
I have a nine year old, so I think that I don't, I don't 100% No, but it has something to do with like, this newer generation.

Scott Benner 37:54
I'm clicking like it's the only it's the only one I don't know. I was so proud to know that today is Thursday, the 16th Hold on a second mewing is an internet craze that promises to change the shape of your jaw line and fix other problems.

Unknown Speaker 38:11
That's not what I thought it was

Scott Benner 38:14
Lauren's like I thought it was a sexual position form of oral posture training purported to improve jaw and facial structure. It was named after Mike and John mu the controversial British, British orthodontist who created the technique as part of a practice called orthotropics. Does mewing actually reshape your jaw? I don't care if it does or not. I want to be clear, but I do want to say this, Lauren and I know you might be disappointed your episode is 100% called what is mewing.

Lauren 38:50
Oh God, all

Scott Benner 38:53
right now spell this thing that your poor two kids have. Okay,

Lauren 38:55
so dopamine, D, O, P, A, M, I, N, E, next word is beta B, E, T, A, hydroxyl, hydroxylase, h, y, D, R, O, X, Y, L, A, S, E, deficiency,

Scott Benner 39:12
also known as dopamine, beta mono, oxygen, yes, is an enzyme that in Humans, is encoded by the D BH gene, dopamine, beta hydroxylas catalyzes the conversion of dopamine to noreparin norepinephrine. The three substrates of the enzyme are dopamine, vitamin C and oxygen. How about that? And your kids just don't have that. It's a deficiency, right?

Lauren 39:39
Yeah, it's a complete deficiency. So they do not create DBH at all, which means they do not create the norepinephrine or the adrenaline. Does this

Scott Benner 39:47
sound? Right? Is a condition that affects the autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary body processes such as the regulation of blood pressure, blood temperature. I'm going to guess blood glucose is in this list too, huh? Yeah.

Lauren 39:59
When they become around the teenage years is when they have a little bit of it now, but the orthostatic hypotension, which means when you stand up, your blood pressure drops to the point where you can faint. They have it a little bit now, but it's just going to get progressively worse. There's a medication that's called droxy dopa, which acts as kind of like a synthetic precursor, so it acts as DBH, but not naturally. So that helps with the orthostatic hypotension. But is it

Scott Benner 40:29
just so few people have it that there's no medication for it, or is that there's no way to impact it with a medication?

Lauren 40:35
Yeah, the drugsy dopa does help. It's never my daughter is actually the first child to be on it. So that's kind of scary. And, yeah, I'm serious, yeah, the dosage that she's on right now is like 40 milligrams twice a day, but adults are known to have like 600 milligrams three or four times a day, so the dosage is like, all over the place and holy, you know, obviously it's not a perfect science. So, yeah,

Scott Benner 41:05
this is terrible. Like, I'm sorry to say it like that to you, but like, yeah, sudden drop in blood pressure, severe when getting out of bed in the morning during hot weather. As a person gets older, deficiency. Experience extreme fatigue during exercise due to the problems maintaining a normal blood pressure, droopy eyelids, nasal congestion. Males may experience retrograde ejaculation. Now, for those of you who don't know what that means, the discharge of semen goes backwards into the bladder. Less common that I mean, less common features include unusually large range of joint movement, like hypermobility and muscle weakness.

Unknown Speaker 41:47
Holy Christ, yeah,

Scott Benner 41:50
yeah, you're not okay. No, no, yeah, you answered honestly. I got that. Okay, good, yeah, no. Do you cry a lot? I'd cry a lot.

Lauren 41:57
I used to not as much, is kind of like the normal, I guess I've kind of transitioned into this being a little bit more, you know, Lawrence, like I said something, I have resting

Scott Benner 42:08
sad face exactly well, how do you keep up the thing you're supposed to do as a parent around your kids, the like, every little thing gonna be like, how do you do all that for them?

Lauren 42:20
I try to compare them to, like, you know, worse situations. Honestly,

Scott Benner 42:25
have you seen Frankenstein again?

Lauren 42:29
Well, like, like to be completely serious with my daughters that type one diagnosis, we didn't know what the heck it was like. I had only heard of type one, you know, a handful of times, and I still wasn't 100% sure. So when she had the symptoms of, like, losing weight, like she was so skinny and she was vomiting, and the two things that popped up when I would go online was type one diabetes and cancer. And so I'd, I'd say, there's so much worse that you can have, you know, she complains about the pod, or she complains about, you know, my, my other kids will complain about the Dexcom, and I'll be like, there's so much worse. Like, we're lucky that, you know, it's not worse. And obviously I do mean that, but you know, it is hard, because they do have it pretty rough. So yeah, just trying to see the the light. Well,

Scott Benner 43:18
listen again, to be serious, you have to, first of all, yeah, like, and yeah, it does give you, I mean, this is not a thing you would have asked for, but you have more perspective at 31 years old than most people are going to gather, gather in five lifetimes and that, and that will be valuable. Like, like, moving through, you know, for your kids and for you and for your husband, everybody else, I guess that's really the move though. Like, how do you not say to them, like, at least it's not that and to try to make them feel a little better. So, I mean, I guess there's no I have to ask you, like, if you could give one of these away, the diabetes, or what your other two have? Like, there's no, like, pause, even, right?

Unknown Speaker 43:59
Like, diabetes is way easier or no?

Lauren 44:02
Well, they are both very hard in their own ways. But I think the way I think of it in my mind is my youngest two, like, they shouldn't be here, you know, according to nature, because we had to, like, intervene. So during my pregnancy, I had to be seen every single day at the hospital to measure what's called the umbilical artery, because it's very technical and complicated, but they get reverse umbilical flow in their umbilical cord, and when that happens, you have to deliver that day like so they shouldn't be here. You know, it's hard for me to think which one I would take away, because they're both. I know that that my younger two are going to progress, and I don't know what the future holds. You know what I mean? So

Scott Benner 44:51
I have such a difficult question that for the first time, and I'm not kidding you, I stopped myself from asking a question, and I don't. Well, I don't know if I can say it out loud or not. Please ask it. I'm less worried about you and more worried about what people are going to think about me. Oh, gosh. So the two stillbirths happened prior to these children being born, right?

Lauren 45:15
Yeah, my oldest, who does not have that condition, however, does have type one diabetes. Was my first, and then after my first, the two that we lost, okay, we're in the middle,

Scott Benner 45:25
and then you find out this thing, when, like, when do you know what's happening during the second or during the, what I guess would be your fourth pregnancy, or after they're both born? When do you learn about the the issue,

Lauren 45:41
um, I learned when I was eight weeks pregnant with my fifth child, so with my youngest now. So I was already pregnant when we found out it was genetic. Because we did get cleared by the geneticist after we did the initial test, okay, and she had said to me, you know, there it's so unlikely that this is genetic. Like she didn't even want to do the in depth, you know, whole genome sequencing, because she she was like, we're not going to find anything. Well,

Scott Benner 46:08
there's another person who let you down. So Exactly, yeah, but so when you know that is there a moment in that fifth pregnancy where you think, I'll let this go naturally to its conclusion and not intervene, or Absolutely

Lauren 46:22
not. You never know, knowing what I knew like, because I had to give birth to pretty much full term, you know, infants who had passed, and I knew something, so I did something, you know what I mean, like, I would never, yeah, yeah, if it, it would have turned out horribly if I didn't intervene. So, you know, and obviously I was asked the question, do you want to terminate? Because when we I did an amniocentesis, when I found out it was genetic, and they did find out that he did have it. So, you know, I was given that option at the time because I guess it was still legal, but I don't think I'd be able to live with myself, because everything that's happened in my life was not technically my fault, you know what I mean. And so I didn't want to cause something, you know,

Scott Benner 47:09
Oh, that's interesting. You didn't want to be, you didn't want to be the decider on it, yeah,

Lauren 47:13
yeah, yeah. I mean, like, everything that's happened has not been something that I've chosen, you know what I mean. And so I understand if I were to choose, yeah,

Scott Benner 47:22
nothing, no, I completely understand. Yeah. I mean, it just, it bears asking, right? Like, no, yeah, you're not gonna have other children. Absolutely not. Yeah, no, you and your husband don't even sleep in the same room anymore, right? Just, just in case.

Lauren 47:36
No, they removed my tubes.

Scott Benner 47:38
Did you like, say I want to watch you throw them in the trash.

Lauren 47:41
Yeah, pretty much. And they the doctor still questioned me, like, Are you sure? What if this one doesn't survive? And I'm like, Okay, we're gonna take them out no matter what,

Scott Benner 47:51
am I sure? Are you out of your mind? Like,

Lauren 47:56
yeah, they don't understand the content. Like, like, you have more of an understanding just talking to you, and I can tell, than talking to any other medical professional. You know what I mean? Like? Because I feel like they just they don't. I don't

Scott Benner 48:09
know, listen, my brain works very simply. You just told me your kids can't sleep more than six hours without it being dangerous for them. One of the great joys of life is like going to bed late on a Friday night after working a full week and waking up whenever the hell you wake up on Saturday. Your kids are never going to do that. And that point is, is that they're going to be 18 and they're going to go to college, and then they're going to drink or something, and then you're it's going to happen like you're literally going to be on the phone going, someone's got to wake her up and give her something to eat like you don't need, like that's and that's not a thing you're going to forget about. And it's doesn't matter how old you get, it doesn't matter how long this goes on for. You're going to think about this every goddamn day for the rest of your life, and that's not fair to you. It's not fair to them, and it's brave to deal with it, but to not understand it from a third party perspective. Why you might not want to do it is predict. I mean, that's just silly. Like, yeah, please. Oh, my God, it is. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. Seriously, what the hell? Like, who would not understand that? Like, and, you know, the same thing with the diabetes stuff. When people say, like, look, I'm all for sitting around and speaking high mindedly about things and doing some like, gazitas and like, you know, being whimsical, and saying, oh, there's a ton of stuff that I've learned because my daughter has diabetes, and I am probably a smarter person and a stronger person and more resilient, and all that stuff because my kid has type one. It doesn't matter. I'd give it away. In a half a second, I'd go back to not understanding things and not having perspective and being less intelligent and all the other I'd give away the podcast. It wouldn't matter to me. Can all go I'd give it away for anything. And that's why that conversations makes people upset. When people say, hey, what's something you've learned from diabetes? And you'll hear. From people who say, Oh, like, you know, I'm, you know, I think I'm actually overall healthier because I pay more attention to my body. That's a very valid statement. And then somebody else will come in and be like, you're, you're out of your mind, like, there's nothing I wouldn't give away to get rid of this. And so I'm with you, like, I see how hard it's also why I decided to be jokey with you, because I didn't think we could make it through an hour of talking about this, because I'd be, I'd be like, half out the window crying right now, if we treated this too seriously. So I got the space for that. It's getting towards the end of the week, you know

Lauren 50:33
what I mean, Lauren, like, I'm

Scott Benner 50:36
trying to get the Saturday, you know? Yeah, I can't be walking around all day thinking about your kids not being able to sleep. To sleep more than six hours, and your other daughter, your other daughter, surviving a hit. I mean, Jesus Christ,

Unknown Speaker 50:48
it's like one thing after another. There's no

Scott Benner 50:51
way you guys are gonna have other bad stuff. Either you've used it all up already or you're just a target for it. I can't decide what's gonna happen. Your house is Never No No. You don't live in like a tornado part of the country or something.

Lauren 51:04
No, but we get hurricanes. We're in Florida, so the hell out of there

Scott Benner 51:09
right now. If I was you, you're clearly gonna find your ass on a raft floating out to sea one day. Oh, no, I knew it.

Lauren 51:18
If anything, hopefully we'll win the lottery, because we're just that, you know that are, that's our odds. I feel like,

Speaker 2 51:24
I swear, I always make that joke with people like you have these incredibly rare things that never works out with the lottery. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I know, right? Terrible, really, terrible. Oh, are you at least, really pretty Lauren, or something like that. Like, is there any like,

Lauren 51:39
No, I might not even have that go over

Scott Benner 51:43
something I could feel less. Are you six feet tall? You're like, a runway model? No, no, no. I mean something I can, like, at least go, oh, well, she got that. Are you driving, like, one of those Range Rover trucks or something I wish.

Unknown Speaker 51:56
No, I'm just normal.

Scott Benner 51:59
This is terrible. Do you find money on the ground ever?

Speaker 1 52:02
Oh, you know what I have before go ahead,

Scott Benner 52:06
enough to buy something or not. When

Lauren 52:09
I was living somewhere else, I actually found $100 in like, random bills all over the street. All right,

Scott Benner 52:16
I would like for that to happen to you every five hours. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 52:19
thank you.

Scott Benner 52:20
I think that's the way to go. Like, you know, like, when I have stuff bad, I always think, like, at least if I was tall, this would be acceptable.

Lauren 52:30
Yeah, if I was a supermodel, then maybe I can handle it better. I would

Scott Benner 52:33
prefer if my teeth were a little straighter. I feel like I could live with this easier. And like, you know, like, seriously, like, why? I don't know, yeah, it just some people are so goddamn handsome. Just like, that's gotta make up for something, doesn't it, right, money or something like, anything to just like, move this offset it a little bit back to the center, a little for me, for God's sakes,

Lauren 52:58
I know all the way on the edge. Like, come on now, listen

Scott Benner 53:00
your kids, they don't end up ejaculating to their bladder. Can they have children? Or they're not. I know he's like two. Sorry.

Speaker 1 53:10
No, they can't have well, they,

Lauren 53:13
I mean, there's not enough studies, but when they're taking that medication, apparently they, there's a possibility that they may be able to reproduce. So I don't know. I won't, I won't advise any of my children really to reproduce, because it scares the crap out of me. And so even

Scott Benner 53:32
your oldest that has type one, like, does she have the gene?

Lauren 53:36
She's a carrier. And so, like, she doesn't actually have the condition so she carries it. So the odds of her finding somebody who is also a carrier is like slim to none. But, you know, I the, you know, guess what? Anything could happen now, so, you know,

Scott Benner 53:54
unless she meets her third cousin somewhere, oh, God, I like how that shocks you more than the other thing that's fantastic. Do you like, put the all the word out to your entire family about this?

Lauren 54:06
I've tried, you know, it's just talking anything medical. Anybody tell me. I mean, you know how, if you try to explain diabetes to anybody on the street, and they're just kind of like, nodding their head and pretending like they're understanding, I feel like that's how the conversation goes. Yep,

Scott Benner 54:29
it's upsetting on a different isn't it upsetting on a different level, it is.

Lauren 54:33
Yeah. And my brother, who is also a carry this condition, is having a child, and we're getting his girlfriend tested to make sure that this child does not have the condition, or, I guess we're testing the mother to make sure she's not also a carrier.

Scott Benner 54:47
Jesus, so I'd never not ejaculate into a condom if I was in your family, even if I was by myself. What do you think of that? Like this ain't getting on anybody. Dang.

Lauren 55:03
Course, Yeah,

Scott Benner 55:04
no kidding. Thank God you came on the podcast somehow oddly, Lauren, this is the most fun I've had making the podcast. Thank

Lauren 55:18
you. Thank you for having me.

Scott Benner 55:19
Oh my god, are you and crazy. Thank you for coming on and shame on you for not doing it sooner.

Lauren 55:23
I tried.

Scott Benner 55:26
That's my fault. Yeah, fair enough. Although I did, I did record an episode. I found this great doctor, this endocrinologist in Texas, Blevins, and he's going to come on a number of times to talk about GLP medications. Okay? And so we're on yesterday, and we're recording together, and it's a, he's a nice man, and it's not, it's very it's serious, but it's not so dry. And at one point I brought up this like scenario where this person started using a GLP and lost five pounds in the first 36 hours. And I was like, could that be water weight? Like, black and forth, and he goes, I would imagine it would be a water weight or, like, maybe they experienced diarrhea or something like that, and like, we're talking about it. And I said, Yeah, but in fairness, this person's a very clean eater. They have PCOS, right? They're very clean eater, and they're gaining weight uncontrollably, very clean eater, exercising constantly, uncontrollably, gaining weight. This poor girl in her 20s, right? And I said, you know, never had a five pound loss for any reason. And they're in during this entire thing, they injected that GLP and lost five pounds. I was like, it's, you know, and then I think I said, No, whether that's because they exploded out there or not, is neither here nor there, in my opinion. And he kiss kind of giggled just a little bit. And I was like, Oh, I like this guy because, because, as I said it, I thought that's not what I should have said. But oddly enough, exploded from their is less creepy to me than the word diarrhea. Yeah, I agree. So I just rolled with it. I think I'm going to receive a Nobel Peace Prize one day for the conversation I had with you. I would like that to happen. I can I be serious for a second and at the same time say something really nice about myself? I think that this thing that your kids are going through, right and this experience you had with your daughter, seriously, they're two really important conversations, like blended together here with us today. Yes, these are not things that people would sit and listen to. It's too goddamn depressing. It's too obtuse. Nobody's going to have this happen to them. You know what? I mean, like, like, but it's, it's valuable to hear about. And I think maybe the biggest value is to hear, like, your reaction to it more than anything else as a podcast. Like, like, seriously, because there are plenty of people, plenty of people who would just leave. They'd just be, like, these kids are a problem. I gotta go, yeah. Like, like, right. And that's not what you're doing, and you've got their best interest at heart. You're working every day at it. It's obviously a 24/7 situation. You're aware that it's going to have detrimental effects on your health, and you don't care. You're going to take care of them still. Yes, yeah, that's the story to me. The joking around and the laughing part is so that I don't cry while we're talking about it, in case you're wondering, and I don't need you crying, because if you cry, I'm gonna cry. And then, you know what everybody's gonna do with their podcast player. They're gonna go dis depressing and they're gonna shut it off. Instead, we laugh the whole time, and yes, we have a cartoonish vision of me shooting glucagon with one hand and choking a one in their 60s with my other hand. So yeah, oh, my God. I honestly think I might ended up in jail.

Lauren 58:46
I know, right, yeah, someone come in here

Scott Benner 58:49
and give my kid glued gun while I murder this person. Like, just, what in the hell? You didn't say anything. Mean, no, oh, I would have been so incredibly mean. I'm disappointed in myself saying that

Lauren 59:01
I did. But, yeah, I don't. I'm not really that kind of person. I guess. I don't know if I I was just so, like, out of it, like I was in such shock. I think I, you know, it's just,

Scott Benner 59:14
I mean, listen, maybe I wouldn't, truth be told, it's possible I wouldn't, but in my heart, I kind of hope I don't think I'm that person. To be perfectly honest with you, people now are probably laughing going, oh my god, Scott, you're 100% that person. But I think I'd be shooting glucagon while yelling, you dumb mother and like, I think I would have said such horrible things to her, and I probably would have apologized afterwards, but I don't know how you stopped yourself. You were in shock, obviously,

Lauren 59:44
yeah, I was just like, not, I don't know. I was not present in my head. I guess I sometimes, like, you just have to, like, remove your brain. I don't know. Well, no,

Scott Benner 59:55
it sounds, it sounds like you, you. It took you a second, but then once you did it. You pulled it together and you started taking steps, right? Yeah, that's true. I would have been disappointed in myself, but I definitely would have cursed a lot and said is probably the most hurtful things I could think of. Yeah, I'll see a third Yeah. About that, maybe, but,

Lauren 1:00:12
but, yeah. Going back to the other conversation with my other two, I just want to mention that there's something called pots. I don't know if you heard of its Yeah. So, yeah, you know, they don't really know a whole lot about it. And this condition, the dbhd, of main beta hydroxyl, place efficiency, actually kind of mirrors it, in a way. And the researchers think that the dbhd may be a little bit more common, you know, then we know of because it's just so not really tested for so, you know, if anybody does have pots likes and you know, symptoms and medications are not helping them, and also, if they've been like, born, low birth weight or prematurely, then I would look, you know, I encourage you to look into that diagnosis, because, You know, there's potential for other people to be diagnosed with it as well. It's just not, you know, it's not researched and studied enough interesting.

Scott Benner 1:01:08
That's very interesting. I was speaking with a person who has pots recently, who also has a heart issue, like a medication for I wish I was paying enough attention at the time to remember the name of it, or I would share it with you, but it makes me wonder, like, yeah, POTS is one of those things. They're like, that's that ultra step. I can't I'm saying the word wrong when you stand up and you get very dizzy,

Lauren 1:01:28
exactly, yeah, orthostatic hypotension type syndromes, yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Scott Benner 1:01:33
All right, Lauren, is there anything that we haven't talked about today that you want to

Speaker 1 1:01:39
No, I believe we covered a lot of it. Yeah, I think that was, that was really good.

Scott Benner 1:01:43
Mm, hmm, yeah, okay, anything you want to say, you want to curse once, or anything like that, let it out

Lauren 1:01:54
a little bit sometimes. But yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:01:55
like how you blended the at the end there with, though you were, like, you were very strong with the mother. And then you, you kind of got a little, like, like, a little, like, a criminally there with the part that was nice, yeah, like, I felt like you could have stolen my car.

We're done some good voiceover work for children's cartoons over 18 years old. Thank

Lauren 1:02:16
you. Yeah, somebody needs to hire me now. Somebody

Scott Benner 1:02:18
needs to hire you. Listen to me. God bless you. You should find $100 on the ground every five hours. As I've just said, Someone should call you immediately and give you a job where you make $90 million a year. And some researchers should end up with, uh, whatever your kids have. So maybe they pay attention to it for five seconds. But for real, though, by the way, seriously, yeah, 30 people,

Lauren 1:02:40
30? Yep, yeah. Online, you can read it says between 25 and 30. So my kids are two of them.

Scott Benner 1:02:48
Holy shit. All right, yeah, listen, you're a saint. What do you think of that? If there is a heaven on a bumper sticker, if there's a heaven. You don't get into it. Something went wrong. Okay, you murdered 43 nuns, if that happens. Okay, holy hell, man, I don't know what. Hey, listen, I didn't want to ask because I was afraid I'd get a sad story. But is your husband? Like? Is Is he okay?

Lauren 1:03:18
Yeah, he's okay. Ask each other, are you okay? Like, every so often, so we just have continuous, like, rusting bitch face, I guess, oh,

Scott Benner 1:03:29
oh, are you kidding? 1,000,000% don't let the kids say it, though you gotta figure that out. Yeah, Jesus. You know, In what world, what family does the kid with type one run around going, Whoo, dodged a bullet. No kidding, I got lucky. Exactly you too. I can't believe you two met. Did you at least meet in a small town, or was it like a way at college or something like that? No,

Lauren 1:03:58
it wasn't a small town. Yeah, we were in middle school, and that's where we met initially, and then we we ended up getting together later on, when we were in our early 20s. So like,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:08
sixth, seventh grade,

Lauren 1:04:10
yeah, yeah, we were sixth grade, sixth grade, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:13
did you like, make, like, hold hands and stuff when you're in sixth

Lauren 1:04:16
grade? No, no, but we knew of each other, you know,

Scott Benner 1:04:20
yeah, yeah. He's like, I'm gonna get that lady pregnant a bunch of times one day, and it's gonna be all kinds of horror that comes afterwards. Also, children are a blessing, etc, and

Lauren 1:04:33
so, absolutely, absolutely,

Scott Benner 1:04:36
well, listen, I gotta tell you something. I have my last question for you. I know how you're gonna answer it, so it's almost silly to ask it, but I think it but I think it makes a good point, if you could get in a time machine and not have these kids, would you do that?

Lauren 1:04:47
I'm telling you, I think about this question daily. Go ahead, I really do. I can't say with 100% certainty, but I don't know if I could go through it all again, to be honest with you,

Scott Benner 1:04:58
I really don't if you went back. Back in time and you knew what was going to happen, you could stop yourself, right?

Lauren 1:05:05
Absolutely, yeah, it would be a completely different narrative if I knew what I know now, right? Absolutely,

Scott Benner 1:05:10
because you wouldn't know the kids. You just know the like, what like? Because I if I gave you a magic wand, you wouldn't make the kids disappear, right? Right? She's like, Yeah, no, of course not. What?

Lauren 1:05:21
Take away their take away the shitty part. Did

Scott Benner 1:05:24
I sound convincing when I said that? No, but, but seriously, I understand what you mean. You go back in time. You don't know the people, you just know the situation. Yeah, and you and so listen, I gotta be honest with you, I would do the same thing. Yeah, yeah. 100% now, if I took you back in time and showed you a picture of the three kids and had all the memories of loving them, and then said it, what happens then?

Lauren 1:05:46
I didn't know any better than Yeah, go for it. You know what I mean? Like, it's rough. If I could go back to 14 and tell her everything that went down by the time you're 30. Like, there's

Scott Benner 1:06:00
a little boy in sixth grade. He's gonna smile at you when he does, kick him in the balls as hard as you can and yell no, and then uppercut palm into his nose. Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:23
We might want to believe your name.

Scott Benner 1:06:28
All right, I need more people on the podcast being this honest, uh, send me an email. Okay. All right. All right, Lauren, let's let you go before one of us has a stroke from laughing and then or more people judge us for being terrible. People, whatever is going on right now. I know, listen, that's on them. Okay, never heard your tits been through a ringer. Your whole show gone through a couple of times. I think

Unknown Speaker 1:06:53
they pushed me through the whole thing

Scott Benner 1:06:54
barn. We would be friends if we were near each other, we really would be sure, no, we would definitely be friends. I would never, ever get you pregnant because you you were very dangerous, as far as I can tell. But we could definitely friends. Yes,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:11
oh my gosh,

Scott Benner 1:07:12
you must be the lady in the neighborhood that other ladies point to and go, Oh, don't worry. At least that didn't happen to us. Like you're like, oh, there's some out there that are still absolutely Lauren just said there are people in my town I wouldn't trade places with. That hurts if you're hearing it. No kidding. Are you a stand up comedian in your in your private life? What do you do for a

Lauren 1:07:39
living? No, I can't. I don't really have time to do anything.

Scott Benner 1:07:43
It's like your job. Is that, right? But no, yeah, so let me ask one last question. Have you always had, like, a in my estimation, you have a terrific sense of humor. Okay? I think sense of humor is measured by your ability to make fun of things that are clearly not funny, but you can say something funny about them. I mean, obviously nothing that has happened to you is fun, right? And so did you have this before all this? Have you always been like this? The sense of humor part,

Lauren 1:08:12
I think, a little bit, and I think I also had to kind of acquire it, because it's like, kind of like a coping mechanism, I guess, because if you know, if you don't laugh, you'll cry, yeah, you know, it

Scott Benner 1:08:24
is a little bit of a coping thing for you, but, yeah,

Lauren 1:08:26
yeah, no, I've always, I guess, yeah, but it is mostly coping. And

Scott Benner 1:08:34
maybe I don't usually do this while I'm being recorded, but Have I done anything that's made you uncomfortable? No, okay, not at all. Okay, because if you have been you could just tell me, I'll just delete it. You know that? Right? No, okay, oh yeah, of course, because there are going to be some people who don't have a good sense of humor, gonna be like that lady just took that for an hour and blah, blah, blah, like I hear you old hens out there. Don't you worry. I want to say this. I'm gonna say something, because there's no place I'd ever say this again on any episode when I was growing up. Like, between me and my friends, our measure of if you had a good sense of humor basically boiled down to, could you laugh at a very well crafted dead baby joke? Because that there's nothing funny about that. So like, if somebody could actually craft a piece of humor that would take something that horrible and still, your brain could go, Oh, I see why that's funny, huh? Like, like, and laugh like that. To me, is a pure sense of humor, because there are obviously plenty of things in the world that are not funny. It's not the thing you're laughing at. It's it's actually the structure of it, right? It's the Yeah, it's the conversation around it that makes it, that makes you laugh. It doesn't make you laugh at the horrible thing and it just makes you be able to laugh at the situation. Absolutely,

Lauren 1:09:44
yeah. I mean, could you imagine being that serious about like, I don't think I'd be here if I didn't have some kind of, you know, way of thinking otherwise, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:53
I think you'd be on six different pharmaceutical medications, right? Absolutely, yeah,

Lauren 1:09:57
totally, yeah. You have to, you have to. Well, you have to be able to laugh at yourself and laugh at the situation regardless of what it is, because if you don't, then you're just going to be miserable. You know, I

Scott Benner 1:10:07
think that attitude gives your children a very good chance at finding that for themselves too. So I applaud that, honestly. Okay, yeah, all right, well, that was weird to get serious at the end, but, all right, you want to curse anymore, Lauren, because you were really great at it okay? Because, I mean, if anybody needs to scream into a pillow, I feel like it might be you, so I'm gonna let you go. Yeah. All right. Hold on one second. All right.

Lauren 1:10:32
Thank you for having me a huge

Scott Benner 1:10:41
thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon. Find out more about gvokopen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash, juicebox. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juicebox. This episode of The juicebox podcast was sponsored by Dexcom. The Dexcom g7 is what you need. It's what my daughter wears, and you can learn more about it at dexcom.com/juicebox. Links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com, the diabetes variables series from the juicebox podcast goes over all the little things that affect your diabetes that you might not think about, travel and exercise to hydration and even trampolines. Juicebox podcast.com, go up in the menu and click on diabetes variables. Alright, kids, we're done. We're at the end. Just do me one last favor, if you can, if you could please, if you have the need or the desire for something that one of the sponsors is providing, please use my links or my offer codes. They help the show so much, and that means me, you're helping me to make this podcast every day. You're helping me to support the private Facebook group do all the things that I'm doing, I'm not asking you to buy something you don't want or something you don't need, but if you're going to get one of these items, use my links or my offer codes. They help me a ton. Thank you so much for listening and for supporting. I really do genuinely appreciate it. I'll be back very soon with another episode, the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrongwayrecording.com you.