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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):Welcome back, friends, to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Angela has four children, one of them—her daughter—has Type 1 Diabetes. Today, we're going to talk about advocacy, looping, Hashimoto's, chronic kidney stones, and other autoimmune conditions in her family. This is a complete story. Nothing you hear on The Juicebox Podcast should be considered medical advice. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan.

Don't forget to save 40% off your entire order at CozyEarth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code JUICEBOX at checkout. That's JUICEBOX at checkout to save 40% at CozyEarth.com. When you place your first order for AG1 with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year's supply of Vitamin D. Visit DrinkAG1.com/Juicebox.

If you are the caregiver of someone with Type 1 Diabetes or have Type 1 yourself, please go to T1DExchange.org/Juicebox and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes and will really help Type 1 Diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T1DExchange.org/Juicebox.

[Music Plays]

Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Contour Next Gen Blood Glucose Meter. This is the meter that my daughter has on her person right now. It is incredibly accurate and waiting for you at ContourNext.com/Juicebox.

The episode you're listening to is sponsored by US Med. Visit USMed.com/Juicebox or call 888-721-1514. You can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from US Med.

Angela Kritzberger 2:02
Hi, my name is Angela kritzberger, and I am the mother of four, spouse to one, and our daughter is a type one diabetic. You

Scott Benner 2:14
just made me think, Angela, one day, I hope somebody says I'm the spouse to four, mother to one. I can't use my whiteboard because I used it during a call for Arden for school, and she still hasn't written down everything she needs from it. So you have four kids. What are their ages?

Angela Kritzberger (2:27):So, the ages are 26, 24, 19, and 15.

Scott Benner 2:33
You're my age. You're 53 I'm 5252 it just turned 53 How long you been married?

Speaker 1 2:40
We've been together 36 years, and will have been married 29 so yes, we were 16 and 18. Wow, were you the 16? I was a 16. Yes, my husband's going to turn 54 tomorrow. I have a question.

Scott Benner 2:55
Do you think that just happens? Because eventually girls mature more quickly than boys, and then they want to talk to somebody that doesn't seem Dippy to them. So they go with older guys

Speaker 1 3:09
Most definitely. Yeah, I found a good one early in life that

Scott Benner 3:13
sounds like it that I was gonna do the math 36 and I have to, like, carry a one, and that makes that four. And this is a six, and then the 316 you've only you were 16. Well, you knew that, but I was just proving it with my

Speaker 1 3:27
math. We've been together a lot longer than you've been married than we were ever were alive. Yes, yeah, that you were wherever. How old were you when you got married? I think we were 22 and 25 Wow, somewhere. No, yeah, something like that. You

Scott Benner 3:39
met a boy when you were 16, dated him for six years and then married him.

Speaker 1 3:44
We didn't go to the same school. We grew up in the same area. We're both farm kids, and after we started dating, we found out that our dads happened to be best friends back in the day, when you know, they were showing animals and all those connections. So it's been a pretty cool life because our dads had been friends since 1960 I think, oh my gosh, went to proms with each other, sisters, cousins, whatever. So anyways, it's been a pretty cool life because our dads, both my husband and I, went to college, to our State University, and got our degrees. He was engineering, I was communications, and we moved back home to take over our family farms. So it's pretty cool. We were able to spend our lives part of maybe later. We just lost my father in law this year, but and my dad suffered a stroke in March. So our lives changed quite a bit in the last last few years, but we were able to farm actively with our dads for a number of years, which is pretty

Scott Benner 4:42
cool. Isn't that amazing? At first, I was going to make a joke that you were grown on a farm, and you said you were farm kids, but this is much more interesting. Did you go off to school with the intention of learning something that would help the farm? Or did it just work out that way?

Speaker 1 4:54
You know, you really don't know if you're going to marry the person that you've been dating. I think that was probably in the. Back of our minds. And there were certain things I knew my heart belonged back here, so I knew that I wanted to have a degree that was very useful. And anything that I, you know, education was something I could have looked at. But when you put yourself in a very specific rural area, and if there are teaching positions for what like, let's say music. I love music. The, you know, the music teacher that we've had at our school system hasn't retired, you know, for 30 years. So, you know, I guess I went into communications. It's something that I was really interested in. Didn't know it was going to take me business. Knew it was very appliable, but I knew that my husband was going to farm, you know, so, but there were things, certain things that I wanted to do before I got married, you know? And so I achieved those and we got married. So one of them was going to Europe, and I sang in the concert choir in college, and was able to tour all over Europe, which is a pretty cool things, geez. So yeah, so anytime our kids have opportunities for doing those kinds of other way,

Scott Benner 5:56
yeah, yeah, that's excellent. You're going to tell me, there's a lot of autoimmune in your family.

Speaker 1 6:01
There's so much I had to write it down. I used to hate ordering

Scott Benner 6:05
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Speaker 1 7:27
okay, in the context of how you like to outline it, so I'll just kind of review it. So for myself, I've had hypothyroid Hashimotos for 30 plus years. I've had celiac for 10 years, kidney stones for as long, unfortunately. So our family on the female side has thyroid issues, and then we have type one diabetes ladder. My maternal great uncle was diagnosed in his 20s and passed due to complications at 59 from not well controlled diabetes. We have on my paternal side type two, a ladder, and just kind of the the normal aging process. So my dad, his grandmother, I've gotten into a lot more of the type two care recently because I'm close with my parents, and he suffered a stroke, and so that's been a little bit different with hospital stay versus home stay. So really kind of digging into that and got him connected so that he could get the glucose monitor, like our daughter, to really study those trends. And then, on my husband's side, he also has type one, late onset. His sister was diagnosed in her 20s. She's since passed not from diabetes at 39 and then also type two ladder, just again, kind of the later in life, genetic maternal grandpa. And then our daughter was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was seven. So, you know, had grew up in the 80s, and I think 70s and 80s, I guess. But you know, diabetes is the first thing that comes to your mind, there's just been now, determination between type one, type two and so really trying to or juvenile diabetes, really the conversations about, Gosh, who had this and and whatnot, and then all of these things start coming to your mind, like, Oh, I remember that lady at church, we always had to have frozen orange juice. We're rural area, frozen orange juice in the freezer, and we have to make it quick for her, you know, when she start passing out, you know, so, just things like that. And, oh, my uncle, I remember, what did he have six Snickers bars, you know, the week that he was diagnosed, some of those things. But you're, you're like, dang, I didn't know it was going to be, you know, how did I not own the sign? So, you know, my story, I would say, isn't much different than many. No, everybody has that. But tell me again, which one of your kids type one? It is our youngest. She's 15. Yes, I think I'm at the point now. Uh, she was seven. She was 15. Now she's had it for eight years. It is important. And the more that I you know, I do work with advocacy, it's important. Really for the testing and the things that we've heard about and finding out where the connections, you know, is it environmental? Is it genetic? Yes, it's all of those triggers. But at the time, we were experiencing a lot of trauma. My father in law was diagnosed with non Hodgkin's lymphoma the same week that our daughter was diagnosed with type one diabetes. And so everybody's story, you have a lot going on. We're farming. My husband had been taking my father in law to the doctor every other day, 30 miles away locally. Our first born was graduating from high school. We have a large farm. We were trying to get the planting in. There's just a lot, you know, a lot going on. Did we see the signs? Didn't we see the signs? But just, you know, my husband and I kind of conquered it and divided. I took my daughter's care, my husband helped, you know, with his his mother, with his dad's care, and so there's just a lot going on there.

Scott Benner 10:52
It's a lot to do with having your own business and not being able to stop. Yeah, I see other people like, something goes wrong, and they're like, Well, I took some time off and I, I'm, I'm always like, Well, I I got up earlier and stayed up later. Like, that's how I handled my problem today. Because, you know, I can't, I just can't do that, even my it's so odd that you said about your father in law. My father in law is at the end of his life right now, and my wife just went to just now, like, literally 20 minutes ago, she left to meet her mom at the hospital to help her mom understand the care that they're going to give him at the end of his life, so that, you know, she can understand what they're doing all that. And even my wife's got a, at least, has a job where she can call somebody and say, I'm going to go for a little while. I'll be back. But they also under it's not a day off, they understand she'll just stay up till two in the morning and do her job or something like that, you know, right? But I watched everybody else last night. They were like, well, I took the day off or I had time. And I was like, Oh my God, that's fantastic. I tell the guy I work for that I need off, and he yells at me so

Angela Kritzberger 11:56
and I think that's the benefit too for us, is that we have the opportunity to be able to have a more flexible schedule. Yeah, you know, I'm in the Midwest, so we have inclement weather that prohibits us from doing, you know, really any outside work from, you know, freeze up until FAW. But, you know, we work year round. I don't work in the shop specifically on equipment, but we do a lot of the vet work ourselves on the equipment My in laws we are actually on. We're fourth generation, fifth generation, technically, because the great, great grandma came with the family here on the original farmstead for my husband's family and his parents built their retirement home just half mile away from us. So we're very close and and my parents are 15 miles away. And now, since my dad's stroke, I've been, I guess, really, the primary advocate for him as well the wonderful and the flip side of my father in law getting diagnosed eight years ago was he just passed this year, so we had a lot of time with him. He decided to stop treatment when he had a recurrence, because it was, you know, lymphoma was going to it was going to surface again somewhere.

Scott Benner 13:05
The contour next gen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and it's entirely possible that it is less expensive in cash than you're paying right now for your meter through your insurance company. That's right. If you go to my link, contour next.com/juicebox you're going to find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, Rite, aid, Kroger and Meyer. You could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips in meter than you would pay through my link for the contour next gen and contour next test trips in cash. What am I saying? My link may be cheaper out of your pocket than you're paying right now, even with your insurance, and I don't know what meter you have right now. I can't say that, but what I can say for sure is that the contour next gen meter is accurate, it is reliable, and it is the meter that we've been using for years, contour next.com/juice box. And if you already have a contour meter and you're buying test strips, doing so through the Juicebox Podcast link will help to support the show. The

Speaker 1 14:16
worst side effect, I guess, for him, after the chemo and the treatment was he lost the ability to walk, but he was able to transition and be in a wheelchair and and lived a full life, and was on hospice for, I can't remember, four years, but was kicked off because they

Scott Benner 14:31
were like, listen, you're not really dying. You got to get off. This. Is that what it was? Yeah,

Speaker 1 14:35
our family joke was like, Okay, kids, we better go, you know, make sure we go to Christmas, because this might be grandpa's last Christmas, and we had like, six last Christmases with grandpa, and so it was amazing. And he just passed this spring, and yeah, we've just had a lot of things everybody has lost in their life, but, you know, he was just an amazing person, and my dad's best friend, and so it's been hard on my dad, too. And then my dad had a stroke in my. Search, and it was just kind of crazy, because we had just buried my father in law, like six weeks before that, and my husband had to on a regular, not regular, but often help his dad. When he had fallen in my dad had fallen it was kind of like, my dad is a seven backseat. We just thought it was his back. It's like, what's going on. Then it was a stroke. But the wonderful thing about all of it is, although we're rural, we're about 45 minutes from two major the biggest cities in our state, in North Dakota, we have an amazing facility right here in my hometown where we live. And before I started farming full time with my husband, my job was the Foundation director at that medical facility, and we had a $13 million building and expansion project, and so we really have a full scale facility that is, I think, really hard to match, because we have clinic X ray, P, T, o, t, assisted living, nursing home, skilled care, nursing emergency room. We just have an amazing facility, and I was really proud of being part of that, because we had to raise a million and a half for that building project, locally, for that project, and my grandma was one of the first residents in the nursing home, long term care, and I helped license the assisted living portion, portion of it. I think just using my skill set, again, why did I get a communications or business degree? I don't know. You know, I use it somewhere. Do you think your kids

Scott Benner 16:25
think the same way you did? Like growing up like because it's obvious speaking to you that like your focus was on community and coming going back to it, and building on top of what was there already. But when I hear younger people talking now my kids and other it's either like, what do I want to do, or where can I make money, like that kind of thing. But do your kids have the same community feeling? Or do you think they're Do you think that's a time passed too young

Speaker 1 16:52
to tell however our son, our oldest son, is an educator, a wonderful person, and one of those lifelong learners, of which I think I am, but not to the level of he is, like, if I could phone a friend, I should give you his number. Yeah, he is. He's like, Cliff Clavin from cheers. Yeah, you know, we have the board game factor crap, and he knows a lot of facts. Yeah, he's just a lifelong learner. But he moved back to our community because he did want to very family oriented too? Yeah, I don't know. I think all of us want to see the world, but maybe we want to come back to our roots. And obviously, with the family business is a little bit different for some of us. Yes, you can choose not to do that, but just for me, inherently, my call is to be close to home, part of this community. When I quit working, when you're a Foundation director, you're involved in a lot, you know, obviously asking for money from people for supporting the programs that are, you know, at our facility. But, and that was a big one after we had kind of got all the money in the bank from our capital campaign. Is when a is when my mom had her first knee replacement, I think. And I just decided, you know, this is a time both of our parents retired within two years. So it was, it was a bigger operation where I just, I needed to focus on the farm and focus on my family, because I had been, you know, raising free, raising four kids, kind of on my own, managing a senior care facility on the side, besides Foundation director, just a lot of different things. I still am involved with that. And president of our Kiwanis Club, which is a civic organization that provides scholarships to our seniors. It runs a local food pantry. I'm on the subsidized housing board for senior citizens. We have 52 apartments. And then I chair a community foundation. And then I work with our local historical society. We have a five course prime rib meal with wine pairings at a Victorian Christmas. And so I do all the tickets for

Scott Benner 18:45
that. When's the last time you were bored?

Unknown Speaker 18:48
I keep myself busy. Yeah, no kidding, I

Scott Benner 18:51
don't get bored either. And I wonder sometimes I hear people all the time talk about like, I was bored today. I didn't know what to do, or I just hung out. I'm like, Oh my God. I think that would be upsetting to me. As a matter of fact, everyone left a few weeks ago, and I made this big pronouncement to myself. I was like, I'm not gonna do anything today. It was Saturday. I was like, I'm gonna watch a baseball game. I'm gonna get lunch, like I was gonna and by like, three o'clock in the afternoon, I started getting uncomfortable. I was like, What am I doing? Like, there's so many things that could be accomplishing, right? I don't think I come off that way, but I feel like that. And you were, I mean, are you unless there's, like, I don't know, murder a couple of people at college and you're trying to keep the voices quiet or something like that, what's going on exactly? Do you think? Why do you think you are are wired this way? Is my question.

Speaker 1 19:34
I was born with a servant heart. That's all I can say. Really, I'm a very empathetic person, which is good in some situations and not in other situations, I guess. But I just, my calling is to help people, and I guess that's why I really wanted to touch a little bit on advocacy work. So it's just, I guess that's just who I am, and I've accepted that. And I, when I have spare time, it's, I don't feel it should be wasted, although trust. Me, I do get bored sometimes, and I can't think of something to do, and then I feel guilty for even thinking, Gosh, should I sit down and read for 30 minutes? No, I can't do that. I have this to do. But I think, you know, all of us have our ups and downs and whatnot, but I guess this is just Yeah.

Scott Benner 20:15
I believe some people hear that and think, oh, you know that, poor woman, she has no downtime. And then there are other people who think the way you do that are like, no, no, this is great. Like, I don't feel like, like you don't feel like you're working, right? No, no, I never, yeah, I never feel like I'm working.

Speaker 1 20:32
Well, it's funny, because, you know, for all of my life, my kids grew up, my office was in a senior apartment complex. It was a congregate housing and so I was manager of that, and that's where the Foundation office was, and it's a beautiful place. It's not connected to our medical facility, but it was initiated by our foundation and medical facility. And my kids grew up with knowing, oh, mom's gotta go. There's, you know, have somebody moving in. So we, I mowed the lawn there. I did snow removal at that time. I also did all of the bookkeeping for economic development group help promote housing in town. I mean, they just, you know, use the skills that you have. And anyway, my You're

Scott Benner 21:12
the living embodiment of that joke about, like, sticking a feather duster up your ass while you're running around the house. You can do one other thing while you're doing it. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 21:22
Like, I think my kids would, well, they have shared the memes about the mom cleaning before Christmas. And I think the funniest one was, everybody's sitting in the house at Christmas. Obviously, we have snow here waiting for me. You know, I've done the cooking, the cleaning, I've wrapped all the presents. You know, they're just waiting to open presents, and I'm out shoveling the driveway. And by any means, my husband is he work. He gets up at 530 he, you know, we don't have animals on our farm. We're a small grain farm. Gets up at 530 and goes, gets down with work at 830 he's, you know, he'll say, I work as hard as him, but that's not true. But anyway, we get in and then I open my present, and I can't remember. It was a sign that I had for years, and it was something about, Nobody works harder than me, or thanks for watching me. So I don't know it was just, it was some meme, but, and my kids like to say, you know, I turn into that monster. Peck I bear room. I'll never forget, I never forget telling my son, you know, in the laundry room, if you don't get your stuff out of here, I'm going to have a heart attack

Scott Benner 22:23
right now. I was gonna say, do you think you have anxiety, or is it just from growing up on a farm that you just work focused?

Speaker 1 22:29
You know, I was involved growing up, I've put to the extent it was so different in that lifestyle. Growing up, we didn't have the scale of farms. Farms have grown considerably just from economics and being able to make things work. You know, a small farmer just can't make the numbers work. You know, you can't have hobby farms, really and and make a living at it. So just the scale of it, it was, it was really different. You know, for me, with my husband being so busy, I don't remember my dad being gone as much as him. So it was, it was, it was different raising kids like, oh, Dad's not home. That was always hard. It's like, Daddy will be home later. It's okay. You know, I had these little kids that just, yeah, love their dad and they don't see them. His hard work pays off, you know, in the end, too, because this lifestyle is one that supports generations. Do you think

Scott Benner 23:17
any of the kids will keep the farm going? I can't even get Arden to decide to like be on the podcast more often. So I'm wondering how you would accomplish that

Speaker 1 23:25
too early to tell but for us, we're fortunate that my husband, when we started dating, he had a brother that was born. So that was new to me, because I grew up in a predominantly Protestant, you know, community, and my husband's family's Catholic, and he's my husband's the oldest of eight, and so when we started dating, he, you know, a couple weeks later, when he asked me to prom, he's like, Oh, I just had a baby brother. I'm like, Oh, okay. And it's been awesome, because I love kids. And he started farming. So the transition for us is him at this point, if our kids want to farm, you know, maybe there's an opportunity for them. But,

Scott Benner 24:01
oh, so he's 17 years younger than your husband. Maybe

Speaker 1 24:04
he's 36 right now. Wow, that's us, which is kind of crazy, because, you know, I saw something on an ad on whatever, and it was cocktail came out with starring com Tom Cruise. And what is it? July 26 1988 I'm like, I know that because that was the first movie that my husband and I went to. It was 36 years ago, cocktail.

Scott Benner 24:24
So wow, look at you showing your age. Yeah, that's crazy. I haven't

Speaker 1 24:29
gotten carded in a while, so I can't, you know, use that, but you know, it is what it is. I guess I woke up and I'm alive today. So we have to go with that.

Scott Benner 24:38
We're gonna keep going. Your mother in law, her uterus fell out in what year, 96 like, when did she just like, I don't know. How many kids did she make? Eight? Well,

Speaker 1 24:48
yes, eight. That eight that I knew, Oh my gosh. Well, I shouldn't say eight that I knew they had. They did have a son that died early. Oh, I

Scott Benner 24:56
say but oh my gosh, yeah, I have couple weird. Little questions. So this one's just thinking in my head so long, and it's none of my business. So you can just tell me to, you know, go to hell if you don't want to answer it. But how does a 39 year old woman die? Is that like tragedy or an accident or an

Speaker 1 25:13
autopsy wasn't performed and she died in her sleep? She had complications from, I wouldn't say complications. It wasn't from diabetes, her blood sugar was normal that we

Scott Benner 25:22
know of. There's no way you don't know. How about that? No, that's really something like

Speaker 1 25:25
my great uncle. So I talk about him or not my great uncle. I'm sorry, my uncle. So my dad had a lot of tragedy at a young age. He had a brother that was died tragically in a farm accident at 14, and then his father passed away a couple years later. So my dad at 19, kind of had to help guide and support his mother, who had a four year old at home still. So that Uncle again, you know, my grandma had him later in life. He was more like a cousin than an uncle because he was, you know, closer in age to us. He laid onset with diabetes. And this was the 80s. They didn't have Juicebox back then, Scott, it was, we knew insulin did something to food, but Were you counting sugar? Were you counting carbs? What were you counting? I just look back now, and I was trying to help my uncle get a CGM, just to help train him and teach him and and trying to get, you know, he's trying to get disability, and he just, you know, we think about the lifelong complications of missing work and not keeping a job and and whatnot. So it was, it was hard to watch, and I didn't truly understand the effects of type one until I look back at his life. Because ultimately, what led to his he had neuropathy from head to toe, literally in his intestines, in his hands, his feet, everything. And he suffered a massive heart attack, went in from went into diabetes coma, suffered a massive heart attack, and passed away in a nursing home at the age of 59 and it was obviously many, many years leading up to that. But, you know, you just, did he test? I just remember him always carrying, you know, I suppose it was a syringe, a vial, of insulin. I don't know if he tested, maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't say my mom was hesitant to my dad getting a glucose, you know, monitor, we have the information. Let's use it, you know. Oh, well, they're, you know, you just, it's a snapshot of time, but now, when you have the data and you can see the trends and and that's why I'm fighting so hard, I don't think people really understand other than people in our arena, why I work so hard to keep our daughter healthy, because I don't want the bad things to happen to her later in life. I want her to have the tools that she knows so she can go on to live a long and healthy life, and now we have the information, so we should be using it.

Scott Benner 27:46
Your daughter's diagnosed, how much of that memory floods to you? I

Speaker 1 27:50
think, like many stories, you start thinking, Is it cancer or is it diabetes, without even verbalizing it. So I had the normal, took my daughter, and I wouldn't say normal, but it's a common theme along a lot of people. I had taken her into the emergency. The emergency room and she had lost a significant amount of weight, and the provider, you know, she's just at that age, she's starting to lose weight and look at herself in the mirror more and like, no, 10 pounds in a month. No, she's seven. That's like, happens when they get their periods and they're like,

Scott Benner 28:18
10. Doctor thought that your seven year old looked in the mirror and thought, I need to drop 10 this month. It wasn't that interesting, okay, but go ahead, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 28:25
It's just one of those things, you know. So anyways, and she was just sick. And yes, like I said, the lady at the church who we had frozen orange juice, my uncle who, you know, had just all of the people. And then my sister in law, you know, my daughter did get to know her aunt that suffered with type one diabetes, and she didn't have, she had access to a pump, but not to a glucose monitor, you know, insurance and all this and that. And so she would talk to our daughter, Nina, talk to her about what's your care and what are they telling you? And you know, to kind of doing comparison, and I know that's weighs heavy on Nina's heart. Sometimes her aunt didn't have what she had. Maybe we're self employed, obviously, so we don't have access to insurance, other than paying for our own commercial plans that are available in our state of North Dakota. And North Dakota only has three major carriers, and obviously it's about your risk pool, right? So we have not a big risk pool, and we don't have a lot of options. We pay a lot of money for our family to have insurance. We've just stuck with it because it's what gives her her glucose monitor, it what gives her her pump supplies, a part of the advocacy for us. It sometimes feels self serving, but you know, it's everybody needs access to insulin. Everybody needs affordable insulin. And when I went in to fill her prescription, this wasn't the first time that I got in. It was $1,100 for four months, or excuse me, four weeks supply of insulin. Yeah. So that's what we were paying for insulin, and I can touch on that a little bit later. But getting back to Nina and her diagnosis, she was born, you know, the mom guilt, so you tried to psycho analyze, like, what happened here? She was born prematurely because I had chronic kidney stones. I was externally begged, and they had to take her early. So about five weeks early, I didn't get to hear that first beautiful cry from the baby. She went into the ICU for a month, then she's brought home, and she really was a healthy baby. At five years old, she had strep throat inflammation, which I had three kids that had their tonsils removed. So you know, it's just ear earaches and sore throats. It's just stuff that happens with kids. But when she was five, she had this bizarre thing. And I went back on her medical notes just to see, you know, when you ask about triggers, where do you think Angie? Did it happen? Well, maybe genetically, but she had swollen lymph nodes around her entire abdomen, and she could hardly sit up or lay down, and she was moaning and groaning, and it something that her body was fighting off. Didn't really have any specific diagnosis for what it was. And then I look at the blood work at the time, and it shows her, her blood glucose level was 110 and, you know, I'm like, why didn't they see it then? But again, that was just a snippet in time. So then fast forward, two years later. Here we are, right ear infection, respiratory infection in the ER, oh, just, you know, generalized abdomen pain. And looking in the mirror, she's lost 10 pounds in a couple of months, and and then you start going, okay, thirsty, weight loss, headaches, belly pain. And I just remember sitting at softball and just it was hot, just saying, Mama, I just, I can't today, Mama. I'm just, I don't feel good. And then I, like, looked in her throat, and I saw something on her tonsil. And was like, this is weird. So we made another doctor's appointment, and she looked her over and she said, Oh, that's a tonsil stone. I'm like, that's what it is. This girl's got to get her tonsils out. She's sick. I figured it out. So, yeah, I figured it out. Yeah. Anyways, so that's the first time I heard about tonsil stone, but our physician's assistant that I you know, I know everybody here. Obviously, I worked at the medical center with everybody, and growing up with some of them, and have known forever. But anyway, she said, let's do some lab work. And we were at an off site location clinic, not one right here, just a few miles away. But okay, so Nina said, I want to do it back back in town. So we did it there, and then went to see my father in law, who's in the hospital. That's why I remember exactly he had gotten his diagnosis. We did labs, and then went to see grandpa. And then we got home, and I got a call from this physician's assistant, and you don't get a lot. She said, I'm going to come out. We need to review her labs. How many times do you get a house call coming

Scott Benner 32:39
out to your house. Yeah, wow, yeah. Did that scare the shit out of you? You

Speaker 1 32:44
said your life's going to change and it'll be okay. And so, yeah, she's like, Yeah. She said that on the phone too. Yeah.

Scott Benner 32:51
Oh, you got the weight while she got to your house to figure out how your life was going to change. I don't remember

Speaker 1 32:56
if she told me over the phone. Oh, okay, all right. She probably, probably did. No, I don't, I don't remember, but she came out with the papers showing me. And I think one of the primary reasons, well, obviously, she's a compassionate individual, but I think one of the reasons that she did is it touched her personally. I think because her roommate in college was a type one diabetic, so she lived directly with somebody and understood the, you know, the gravity of it. So anyway, so we're always very thankful for her, you know, for going that extra step and and whatnot. So then in North Dakota, I'm not familiar with all of the care, but with our, one of our major providers, one of our major medical systems, which is just Fargo, not the movie, nothing like that, but the wood chipper is at our tourism center. If anybody wants to come to Fargo, North Dakota, Cohen brothers movie. It's terrible. I don't talk like that. I don't think, but our major hospital is there. So that's where we drove and found out that our blood sugar was 600 and our a 1c was 12. Oh, and then they and the provider had said, well, they have three pediatric endocrinologists, so we're really fortunate in the eight years of her care that we have. Two of those providers are female and have type one themselves and another provider. So we've just had phenomenal care. So we're really lucky in that sense. You know, they say when you with an A, 1c, like that, she's had it a while, and you're like, huh, how did we not see

Scott Benner 34:22
it? Angela, you saw something. You just couldn't figure out what it was. Apparently,

Speaker 1 34:26
I was really busy to see everything, because at her son's high school graduation party, Nina admitted she's like, Well, yeah, Mom, I had six sprites and I had like, 10 cupcakes. Like, Oh, why did nobody count those

Scott Benner 34:40
you have a farm and four kids and a husband that works 18 hours a day. And I mean, do you feel badly about it still?

Speaker 1 34:49
There's nothing that I can have. There's nothing I could have done to prevent it.

Scott Benner 34:53
No, I know. But does it? It doesn't weigh on you? Or did you have to talk yourself out of it weighing on you? I

Speaker 1 34:59
probably talked. Myself out of it a long time ago, because you don't have time, right? Yeah, well, you don't, I mean, no, but mentally, I mean, you have to live in the moment. And just a little bit, we didn't get a glucose monitor. You know, this is back in the day before they gave them to you when you were first diagnosed. So I slept by her side. My husband doesn't remember this, but I slept on the floor in her room and finger sticked her every two, three hours, 24 hours a day. And her honeymoon lasted in a year, and it was rough at first, because, you know, with that honeymoon, you don't know when they're going to spurt out some insulin, so she'd have some bad lows. And I remember she was, I think it was 32 I didn't think your monitor could go below 40, but I remember 32 and just kind of holding her, and she just kind of looked at me with her little eyes, said, Mama, just let me go. I can't do this. And it's like, oh yeah, no, I'm not letting you go. We'll be okay, you know. So we've had a lot of experience. I

Scott Benner 35:57
have more context with that. Let me go. What was she saying? I

Speaker 1 36:01
have no she idea she was seven. I don't think she has a clue what she was saying. She probably just wanted to say, let me go to sleep. Oh, no, but not my brain, not my brain. You

Scott Benner 36:12
heard. Let me drift into the ether. It'll be okay. I'll see you in heaven. Yeah, no. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 36:17
Jesus. What? Don't look up dead in bed.

Scott Benner 36:20
No, I know what that is. Yeah, okay, yeah, did that? How long did that panic you for that idea? I've

Speaker 1 36:27
had physical therapy. I have degenerative disease, like my dad and some other things. And my physical therapist, I listened to another podcast about chronic pain, and she said, You are in a constant pattern of fight or flight. And I said, Yes, I think I am. So I'm working on that. But I think with this disease, knowing that I am a primary caregiver, you do feel like you're trying to keep them alive, yeah,

Scott Benner 36:50
but let me tell you something too. You also have, you have auto immune stuff, right? And anxiety, like I see with a lot of people with auto immune, the inflammation in general, even, like you said earlier, you said, like, I get a lot of kidney stones. And I thought, That's not autoimmune, but I looked into it. We never got back to it. But it could be something like hyper parathyroidism could generate, right?

Speaker 1 37:15
I have done all of the work up at the Mayo Clinic. I've had my kidney stones actually analyzed, and mine are from lack of I'm supposed to drink two gallons of water a day, I think, just

Scott Benner 37:26
not hydrated enough for your for your body, because you have too much calcium. Yes,

Speaker 1 37:30
interesting, that is correct, huh? I don't have Diet Coke kidney stones, so I'm not like drinking tons and tons of sodium, where I'm creating them myself. No, it's just for me having a lack of fluids. I can't remember where we're at, but Angel, it's

Scott Benner 37:43
okay, because I'm gonna pivot you. That's okay. Okay, all right, because you are, I don't know if you're aware of this or not. You're chatty. I am, yeah, which is fantastic for a podcast, but I don't want to miss the things that you want to talk about, either. So I think you went over how important you think advocacy is. But what about looping? You want to talk about looping as well.

Speaker 1 38:03
Yeah. So just for the glucose monitor, we didn't get it covered for, I think, like three months to somewhere on that time frame. So we got the glucose monitor, then we had to wait six months to get a pump. So we waited six months to get a pump. That was what she wrote in our local paper for Christmas. Is all she wanted for Christmas, was a pump. Well, she didn't get it, but her birthday was January 6, then she got it then, so we had the Omnipod. I think everybody has this. Well, maybe not. Things have changed dramatically, but she got the pump, and we're like, yay. And you're like, what the Googles monitor doesn't like? Put in the blood sugar into the I swear that control for the Omnipod, the original one feels like a game of Pong. You remember that growing up? It's just so archaic.

Scott Benner 38:44
It was something, wasn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 38:47
Well, so anyway, she was on the Omnipod for however, and I had heard about this do it yourself, hacking, you know, the insulin pump or whatever. And at that time that I was reading the articles about it. It was getting a solder gun and welding your own right, like link, this is before the makers of Riley link. I think, Oh, I remember that, yep. And I'm just like, Oh, hell no. It's that's not in my I probably could ask my husband, but I'm I'm not getting a motherboard and trying to that's just not in my arena. I came back to it in the fall and started thinking about it, and then COVID kind of hit. So I had been working on it and reading, you know, the loop docs. And so I decided, you know, I'm going to jump in. And then COVID hit. And was like, this is the perfect time to do some testing. And so got in a few Juicebox pod zoom with everybody. And, you know, I joined So Cal loopers and got to know everybody there, and if she has been looping now for over four years, and it's just been amazing, you can't even understand people don't realize. I'll never forget. It's one of those memories is burned into your mind. I don't remember if it's the first night. First a week after we started looping, but I went to bed and I slept for six hours. It actually held, you know, so our numbers were fairly good in her system. But I woke up and went, huh? I hadn't slept like New Years. I had,

Scott Benner 40:17
was it like a light went off? You're like, oh my god, I might not die. This is gonna be fantastic. Yeah, hey, weren't those zooms great during COVID? I did that. It just felt like everybody needed a place to go. And I know that wasn't like, a unique thing. A lot of places tried it, you know, a lot of orgs and like, Oh, we're gonna do live zooms. But mine really took off like we were doing, like, 300 people at a shot during COVID. And, I mean, there were just screens and screens of faces, just chatting about diabetes. Is that when you found the podcast?

Speaker 1 40:46
No, I heard about the podcast early on, actually, kind of getting back to advocacy and whatnot. But when she was diagnosed a couple of things, I found a Facebook group, a local Facebook group by a mom who started it, who didn't want anybody to feel alone, and she actually has become one of my very best friends. She's in Minnesota, so she's done advocacy work with the Alex Smith insulin affordability act in Minnesota. I'm on the North Dakota side, but we're, you know, a state divided by a river is all anyway. She sent a video. I was freaking out, because you remember the G, g5, yeah, that horrible plunge. I didn't do it in the doctor's office, and I'm 50 minutes away, and I wanted to have it, but I'm freaking out because I didn't know how to put it on her. And you had to do this first, and then that and plunge it and yada yada. Anyways, she sent a video, and she's like, it'll be okay. It'll be okay. This is how you can do it. You know, she, she helped me there. And of course, since I'm a talker, I lost my train of thought, no, you

Scott Benner 41:46
want me to help you maybe. How did you find the podcast? Was it the Facebook? No, I met a friend. Go ahead. Thank you.

Speaker 1 41:53
And then, because yes, thank you for that. I need you in my life more often. Scott, no, not really.

Scott Benner 41:59
Am I in your life too much. Angela, lately, yes, because I've

Speaker 1 42:03
been walking two miles every night, listening to a podcast every night, I'm really trying to hone in here and catch up. Okay, but no, it was the important thing for me, was for Nina to find somebody else that had, you know, had the same disease, that somebody looked like her, felt like her. And so I went to a mom's group, and we were sitting there, and we weren't on a pump at this point, and they started talking about the pumps and how you figure out your basal rates. And my eyes started to roll back, because at that time, we were on traceba and short acting, I don't know what you're talking about. And and then one of them said, well, actually, they had started working with Jenny, or not Jenny, I don't think, but with Integrated Diabetes. Yeah, they took it upon themselves to do that. Said that, you know, we learned about it on the juice basal podcast. And so that's what we're doing. And so, you know, something sticks somewhere for somebody, right? And so I'm like, Huh? Well, that's interesting. So then I started, you know, listening to it off and on. And so that's where, you know, I I started, I haven't listened to all 1600 episodes. Well,

Scott Benner 43:04
there's only 1200 don't make me sound like a lunatic. Angela, okay, well,

Speaker 1 43:07
I think you were like, at 300 when I first started listening, you know. So it's just, yeah, it's, it's amazing, you know. So kind of got it on it early on. This looping community is just amazing, and it is just mind blowing. And I think that was my tag along to you when I emailed you about being on the podcast is growing up in the 70s with bionic woman. You know, there's just that moment where your your child's body is taken over by electronics. It's a choice for certain, but it's a choice you make to keep them alive, to give them the best life forward. And so she had her CGM on one arm and her Omnipod on the other arm. And I actually, like, I had the Bionic Woman doll, and I was thinking, this is really cool, and everything. Like, God, I remember on her arms, you could plug in stuff and do that. And then I looked at the one online, like, I should get one of these and give it to him. Like, no, I don't think so, because I think you can take part of her face off, and, no, I don't think so. But Angela,

Scott Benner 44:04
I just want to prove what a television kid I was, so the bionic woman who was in, like the CIA, you know, like, you know, for real, but she had a job. Remember what her job was? No, was she not a college professor, but like a tennis pro too, or something like that. Ah,

Speaker 1 44:24
that's tennis is, yeah, visually, there's a lot of I can pick. I can picture Linda Wagner and I can picture the million dollar man too.

Scott Benner 44:32
$6 million Man, don't short him. Okay, sorry, that's Lee Majors. He was also the fall guy. Okay, yes, and

Unknown Speaker 44:41
Knight Rider. Oh, there's, yeah,

Scott Benner 44:43
that whole time of those TV shows is crazy. But yeah, I remember one of the feats of strength was her crushing a tennis ball. Do you remember that in the opening Yeah? How ridiculous that idea is. Like, oh, she broke a tennis ball. Does that mean she's that?

Speaker 1 44:56
Yeah? All I can think of was those ports on her arms. Yeah? Interlinks. That's just all that came but so kind of just getting back to advocacy a little bit. I'm just very I'm very proud. And I think my tagline to you about advocacy is we got in early because another mom whose daughter had been to the children's Congress for JDRF, which is now T 1d breakthrough, it come back and was working on the strategies for getting insulin affordability. Because that was a hot topic. You know, eight years ago, we've been through three sessions. We've had a concurrent resolution, a failed bill, and then last, last legislative session, we were able to get Senate Bill 2140, passed in the state of North Dakota, because of the laws and the mandates, we weren't able to get it for everybody on all plans, but for state employees for two years, kind of as a study, and then we'll be going back out. But Nina has been directly involved with this advocacy work with me since that time. The first bill that I helped with, I don't remember the number, was to get people that were on Medicaid a CGM, and so that was expanded for people. So just trying to get some of this technology, but insulin affordability, you know, there's just a lot of thing anytime you can get in front of anybody, education is always, obviously the number one thing that we have to do, and we continually do, is just educating people on the disease. So they're, they understand, like law enforcement thinking that your child is drunk. No, they're not drunk. They have low blood sugars, you know, just so there's just a lot of any kind, anytime you can do education and advocacy is good. But for her, she has presented at when she was a member of our 4h club at her school. She's gone to diabetes camp. She puts together care packages for kids, and she mentors young people that are diagnosed with type one diabetes and will be a counselor at camp. She hand wrote a letter to our our governor, who ran for president, Governor Burgum, gave it to him at our district meeting and asked him to please make insulin affordable for everybody, because that's something that really weighs on her mind, is when she ages off of our insurance. Yeah, you know, will she be able? She's like Mom, I think I want to be this. And I looked at her and I said, Sure,

Scott Benner 47:04
you don't want a job with a fortune 500 company that has really great insurance.

Speaker 1 47:08
Are you sure? Yeah, that's, that's pretty much, you know what we've talked about. And we just say we're working harder for you to make things better. And hopefully it'll be, you know, better than and but she's been an advocate with the American Diabetes Association for, you know, a major giving program that happens every year in the state, and she was actually on the House floor and was able to push go for the vote to pass. It's been a really, really neat, I don't think that all kids have been able to have that experience, but she is just really out there and not afraid to talk. And then in our school, we have a program called close up, which allows you to look at the government close up. And so are we take kids that are juniors and seniors out to Washington, DC every two, three years, and it's a whole program called close up. I'm

Scott Benner 47:55
going to call this episode Angela makes you look lazy. And that's, that's going to be, that's going to be the title people are gonna be like, Oh my God. Like, you're either making this up or you're super person. You know what I'm saying? No, no, no, I don't think you're making it up. But like, still, I can't get my head wrapped around. Like, Arden applied for children's Congress. They turned her down. So, like, but Nina,

Speaker 1 48:16
hopefully we're going to apply this fall, and I'm really hoping, because it's her last chance to get out there. But if we don't, we'll be going the next year, or maybe it's the same year, actually, for close up, because, yeah, when she's a junior, she'll be able to go to close up and do this as well. But when I was out there, that is when the Senate passed, I can't remember now, Congress was looking at insulin affordability, and then, of case, of course, you know, everything fell apart, and here we are. We haven't gotten anywhere federally, and we won't, just because of the environment that we're on right now with an election year and, you know, getting things done. But we feel pretty proud of the work that we've been able to do, and we'll be going back out to try and get them to get this affordable insulin. Our actual bill was copied off of Colorado's bill, and what it does is provide insulin for $25 for 30 days, as well as basic insulin supplies. And there was a lot of education. And right now, capitalism is something that we hear a lot about in our state, and they don't, like, you know, necessarily, like having some people have opportunities for a reduction of their medicine, I was going

Scott Benner 49:24
to ask, how does it work? Like, it's not $25 for like, every living, breathing person, right? So what is it who qualifies for it right

Speaker 1 49:32
now, people that are on the state man, state plan, so that would be your legislators, and any North Dakota employment, public employment, Retirement System employee. So whoever North COVID. So whoever is part of that plan, it could be whoever opts into that. So it could be, you know, your state employees, most schools have gone to self funding. Their own plans, state employees and other people like that, which includes the legislators. But there's a lot. Of things that we learned, and there's a lot of things that we just continue to educate on. They didn't want to Well, you know, some of it's HIPAA, but the data is there. At the time we were pushing for it said, Well, there's only 700 insulin dependent people. The second time we were out there that, you know, it's only going to affect 700 people. Oh, who cares? 700 people can have access to insulin,

Scott Benner 50:22
right? And if that could spread from state to state and it, I mean, if it's the least fortunate of the of every state that can't afford it, then that's really fantastic, because you got to imagine, people with insurance are probably not paying that much more for it to begin with. I mean, they're paying for their insurance as well. But, I mean, like out of pocket, is that not correct? Well,

Speaker 1 50:43
and for us, here's the crux that we have. So I just want to touch on one other point. So we had been working with drafting the bill before it was actually introduced and hitting the floor, so there was some high level involvement in committee work done before the bill could be introduced in the regular session, because we can get every other year. And so there's a lot of things that we were able to work with legislators on, but some things that we learned were that the rebates that the insulin company or the pharmacy benefit managers give to the insurance companies, they use to spread across all the premiums. And so it was like $2 million that was being subsidizing the premiums for the plans. And it's like, shouldn't we be getting that? Because we're being the ones prescribed that. So there were some things that, just like on the federal level, you know, things that come to light that you're trying to advocate and educate people. So when people say, Well, you're making our insurance plans go up. No, we're subsidizing your policy. Because these insurance companies did have a little bit of a heads up that we were working on this. I went out to give testimony in January about, you know, this bill. I went to the pharmacy to fill my daughter's insulin. It was $5 it used to be $1,100 but it was $5 because this insurance company had proactively been working on getting insulin, or some of the top top tier drugs, more affordable. So it's just kind of interesting that that happened. But for our particular plan, we have a high deductible plan, so we pay, I really don't want to talk numbers, but a lot, a butt load of money in premium, over $2,000 a month. How many

Scott Benner 52:21
bags of grain is it? Let's think of it that way, a lot, right? But

Speaker 1 52:26
then we have a high deductible plan. So then what happens is, you pay the premium every month, but then we also have a high deductible plan. So we have $5 insulin, but we have to pay, you know, when I walk into the pharmacy, we have to pay the first $5,000 for any of the glucose monitors and insulin pumps, yeah, diabetes supplies. So you know, there's just a lot of education, and very thankful that because she has type one diabetes and that we have healthcare environment right now that allows a person with this pre existing condition to have access to to insurance, I have a very happy and healthy daughter, and I'm very, very, I'm so, I'm so glad that we have, you know, we're able to have access for her, but there's so many people. We did have an instance in our, you know, we network with people. We have over 1000 people in our Facebook group that's for advocacy resources and support. And we're just everyday people. We're moms, but a lot of us have backgrounds. So the primary people that were working on the insulin bill in North Dakota was me, another mom, as I said, whose daughter had gone to children's Congress. And then we had a another mom who was a lawyer, and we had, there was a core group of about six to eight of us that were working on this, with a couple of us being the most vocal you know, on the news and whatnot. But change can happen, and I just want people to get to know who your local representatives are, because it's about making contacts. I mean, I have all three of my district members cell phone numbers well, and most of them are published on the state site. So I've got our website as a regular tab that's always open, and it'll be an election year this year. So a lot is going to change the landscape, but there's just a lot of things that you can do where people it comes down to people's stories, talking to people, making them understand, because everybody has somebody with diabetes in their family. How

Scott Benner 54:19
would you say that people could go about getting involved locally if they wanted to? I

Speaker 1 54:25
think, as just a everyday citizen, what you need to do is finding out, well, vote, get to know who you're voting for. Vote and find out what committees do they work on. Because, you know, they all work on different committees. One of mine is on education and infrastructure still is going to vote on the bill, and they're in the Senate, and because we have one senator, two House of Representatives in our in our state, so it's opposite on the federal level for us, we've had meetings with our senators as well. Very frustrating. Things don't move fast, and. Don't feel like you're really being heard, but we continue to have those meetings with our congressmen. The way you can get involved is just don't be afraid to tell your story. I think everybody thinks they have to have all these statistics in one statistic that I'm going to throw out there, because I think it shocked a number of people when we went out because Governor Burgum had announced his candidacy for presidency, we didn't get our lovely little photo op after the bill had passed, because he became very busy. So it took us almost a year to get that photo op, and we were sitting around, not with him in the room, but with some other people, kind of waiting for him to, you know, arrive and and whatnot. And the reporters were there and him talking, and Governor Burgum has talked a lot about his wife's advocacy in their work with addiction, which is very important cause as well. Don't ever pit cancer against diabetes, against addiction, that affects all of us in many different ways. But the thing that's very frustrating is people that overdose have access to narcon and clean needles. People with type one diabetes cannot get access to a life saving drug, and they can't even get needles unless they go to a pharmacy that's open 24 hours a day and get it behind the counter. Because we've had all of us, we've forgotten supplies where we've needed to have a needle just to load our pump, kids, pumps or or whatever, and you can't get them because it has to come from a pharmacist. Angela, can

Scott Benner 56:19
I tell you, I first want to say I've incredibly enjoyed our conversation, and I want to keep having it, and I respect everything you're saying. I don't understand that argument. I don't either. I don't understand why someone would say we need a thing. Somebody else is getting the thing they need. I'm mad at them because we don't have it too like I don't. I honestly, I can't wrap my head around the narcon argument. But, I mean, if you have a perspective on it that you want to share, I want to hear it. Well, I don't get trying to make hay out of somebody else's problem. Statistically,

Speaker 1 56:51
there's as many over there's as you know, as I said, the platform has talked about a lot of the deaths from addiction. There's been over $100,000 not dollars. 100,000 deaths from a, you know, overdoses, equally or probably more, because people don't always necessarily say that, you know, only die from complications, but diabetes, there's equal amounts of people dying from diabetes. It's just, we have to be able to it's not pitting one thing against the other. It's making people understand that there are other diseases that are out there that are very similar access to medication that is needed, yeah,

Scott Benner 57:32
and so saying, if you're going to do it for one person, why are we not doing it for everybody? Is that right?

Speaker 1 57:36
Right? It had to have been somebody that pushed to get that, yeah, you know, I don't know. I don't know, and I don't care, right? Because it's just, it should be accessible for everybody, everybody, if you can get clean, you know, for everybody. And that's what it's about, is we want people to live happy, healthy lives, regardless of who you are, what you are, where you are. That's just, you know, basic human thing for me, I guess,

Scott Benner 58:01
you know, there was a time where you didn't need a prescription for insulin. You could just go into the pharmacy and buy it, and you needed the prescription for the needles. And that was in the like, late 80s or early 90s. You could still do that. I mean, in the end, what happened, if I had to guess, is that, you know, oding and addiction became such a big story in the country that people, you know, like you, except for over you know, except they're more focused on probably, they probably had family members who OD and they were trying to get laws passed around that they probably had an easier time pushing it through the the political system because it was out and the Politicians probably wanted to be seen as supporting it. Like, you know what I mean? Like it said, It sounds crazy, but like, diabetes needs, like, enough of that. And I think that's what you're saying too. Like, if people got out there and told their stories to local politicians, maybe they'd hear about it enough that they'd be willing to do something the next time something rolled around. Is that the idea?

Speaker 1 58:58
Well, it's just, it's a part of Preventative Medicine too, you know, we're going to have less ambulance calls where it's it's such a burden on the health care system for all the complications that come from lack of insulin, you know, and, and, yes, what you're saying, I guess, to generalize, what I'm, you know, trying to say, too. We have a rural health care system and an ambulance, an ambulance ride is very expensive. You know, it's we just need people to get involved and tell their stories. And a very good example of that is the Alex unfortunately, it takes somebody passing sometimes, and in Minnesota, the Alex Smith insulin affordability Act that allows people to have access to insulin was because a young man and I saw this post actually happening on the Juicebox Podcast, Facebook group, saying, I don't know if this is true or not, and is this real? And it's yes, it's real. It's my neighbor. Yeah, right next door. He died. He didn't want to ask his mom for help. And I think that comes down to shame. You know, oftentimes, right, there is a shame factor. People don't say, Well, I can't afford my insulin. Well, why don't you work another job? Well, I'm trying to work a job, but I. I can't, because, you know, there's just so many things. And let's just get shame out of the way. Is

Scott Benner 1:00:05
Alex's story, the one where he he moved to a new location, is that, right? And then he got there, no, that's not him.

Speaker 1 1:00:11
He's a 26 year old that didn't have health insurance, and he had aged off of his moms, and he just, you know, said, Oh no, I'm okay. I'm okay. And was waiting to, I think, get health insurance. But I, you know, I don't remember the specifics, but it's less than a week with DKA, yeah, you know, for somebody to pass. And he'd been rationing all along so, you know, as a slower progression there. But so she's been very vocal his mom and pay or die, is the video that you can watch about it. You know, it does happen. It's out there. And we had an instance not that long ago of somebody, you know, in our group saying, I'm out of insulin. I need insulin. They'd already been to the, er, I'm trying to get on, you know, trying to get some help. It happens, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:00:58
no, I've seen the, I mean, I've seen those posts over the years a number of times somebody's just like, I don't have insulin. And then people, you know, try to give them the best advice they can, but oftentimes it ends up being someone who drives out and hands them a vial of insulin,

Speaker 1 1:01:12
you know, yeah. And the thing that's so hard, you know, in our advocacy work is, which really ticked me off in the last session, was not all insulin is created equal. Well, why can't you just go to Walmart? Why can't you do this? And it's like, you know, and what I had said in one of my arguments was, if you want to, if your loved one is diagnosed with cancer, how about you go get a bag of chemo that was developed 30 years ago? Yeah. Is that good enough for you? Yeah, that's

Scott Benner 1:01:39
that ends up being so

Unknown Speaker 1:01:40
let's do it past that. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:01:42
right, right. No, I mean, and that person should be able to just walk into a pharmacist, yeah, and say, I'm a type one diabetic. I'm out of insulin, I'm in medical trouble. Like, help me, instead of, like, having to go to Facebook and say to people I don't know what to do, or being afraid to tell your mom, or, you know, any other of the endless possibilities. It's like

Speaker 1 1:02:03
food. I mean, as I said, I work with in our community, with our food pantry, and there's a lot of shame that comes with it, you know, people think there's a lot of people that abuse the system, you know, but there are a lot of people that are in need and and we know it, and we just, yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:02:16
have to say, there's another argument I don't understand. So I've said this a number of times, like I tried to get in the past, I've tried to get companies to do things that oftentimes their lawyers say they can't do. I've tried to get people to give away pumps. It's hard to do, you know, like it's you can't really give away medical supplies. But at one point, while we were having the conversation, I said, why don't we just make it open to people in a certain financial situation, and they said, well, someone's gonna lie. And I said, Well, isn't that. So that's just the cost of doing business, right? Like, so if you, you know, if you help 1000 people and five people cheat the system, oh, well, like, you know what I mean, like, you help the other people that. But that's another one of those arguments that always stops those conversations. Well, somebody's going to cheat the system like so don't help anybody because of that. That doesn't make sense to me. Either.

Speaker 1 1:03:08
Doesn't make sense. And what the statistics show, I think this was in 20 I can't remember the years if it was 2021, that the Alex Smith insulin bill came into effect. You know, when we were legislating but if you Google it, 459 people in the year 2022, or 2023, 459 people had access to insulin because the element bill that didn't previously. Now, I don't know what the year after that number was, but that's 459 people that needed insulin, people that were put shame aside and put their health first. And so, you know, we have, we have the numbers there. But you know, obviously, you know, I'm, I'm passionate about that. I'm just, I asked, ask a lot of questions. I talk a lot and and, you know, I just for people. Just don't be afraid to share your story. Find your people, and I guess finding the juice boss podcast, finding the Facebook group, you know, finding people in your arena and seeing what you can do to do. When I one of my testimony, when I finished it, what I had said is, if not you, then who? Yeah, because I think we just think, oh, they them. No, somebody will handle it. We're all a part of this. We're all a part of this. If it's not you, we suffer

Scott Benner 1:04:27
a little bit too, because, generally speaking, a lot of the people hearing this are probably, I mean, if you have time to consider your a 1c or your kids a 1c and you have the finances to, you know, get the equipment that you need, and you know you have the time in the middle of the day to, like, go for a walk and listen to a podcast or something like that. Like you very well, might be a person who's not impacted by the cost of insulin, and then, therefore, you might be less apt to be involved in something like this, you know what I mean, because it's not impacting

Speaker 1 1:04:58
or maybe you don't have the time. And. Certainly, everybody's circumstances are different. You know, with my what I was going to say is, when I quit my job, the first thing, you know, I was like, ah, What? What? You know, the kids asked mommy, what's your title? And that was like, that's the crux of it all. Like, what is my title? My mom, no, I don't know my title is right now, but I'm working on it. The other things, if you don't have time, well, then find time with your kids to go to the JDRF events. We have walks. You know, there's a lot of things that you can connect with other people, connecting other people. Just find something to connect with. You know, if you don't have time, you have time to do something, yeah, you know, contribute in whatever way you can, in fashion and no, not everybody can, but if you think you can, I just want to push you a little bit. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:05:44
go try it, and you can give as little or as much time to it as you can, like, it's not, it wouldn't be bad if it was a couple hours a month or, you know, a couple of days, educate

Speaker 1 1:05:56
yourself on the system, right? You know, just find out. Because I think you have to do that. I mean, you with your own insurance, you just have to be an educated individual. Yeah, well,

Scott Benner 1:06:05
that's it's really wonderful that you're doing, that It seriously is, and that your daughter got involved, and it's all it's lovely. It really is. I tried for years to do stuff with JDRF, and eventually I got to the point where I thought, like, nobody's listening to me anymore. And like, you know, I just tried a different way, and I did this, but in the big it was, I found it really fulfilling. In the beginning, like raising money for the walks, going to out to the talks and stuff like that. I've given a number of JD ref talks. I still do that, but yeah, I think any way you can help,

Speaker 1 1:06:41
yeah, you know. And so many of these, and I think that's part of it, is so many of them in JDRF, too. We've seen it here. These are big organizations. We saw it with the Girl Scouts, you know, when my daughter was in it. They now it's a tri state organization, you know. So it's, there's just less and less people that are in office to support doing the work. So it lands on the volunteers, so it comes back on us. You know, to do a lot of the things for the walks or,

Scott Benner 1:07:07
well, they really scaled back it during COVID, yes,

Speaker 1 1:07:11
yeah. Think everybody did it. It was just the law of numbers. Yeah. You know, it is what it is. So yeah, and maybe we'll have an uptick. I know that even the camps for kids. I've been really pushing hard for just advocating for kids, because we do have, we do raise money for helping subsidize kids to go to diabetes camp with our local camp, but just trying to get kids to go to those camps too. But same thing, you know, it's just the camp directors in charge of three camps in the tri state area. You know, what can we do to help support them, get it out? Because it's, you know, for the benefit of the benefit of the kids, yeah, use the resources that you have. We all have gifts that we can share and see what you can do with that to

Scott Benner 1:07:51
it somehow, make it, make it better. Just, yeah, yeah, incrementally, even just make things better.

Speaker 1 1:07:57
No, it's wonderful. I guess. I guess that's really all that I have you were being a talkative person. I think I've touched on all the things. I

Scott Benner 1:08:03
swear to God, I was like, there was a moment when I was like, this one's great. I'm not really gonna have to do much, and she's so interesting. This is a nice week offer they offer me, but I still got to have a great conversation. Hear a lot of wonderful stuff. There was something you mentioned before we started recording, but you didn't bring it up here. Do you have questions about it, or would you prefer not to talk about it?

Speaker 1 1:08:25
No, I think I'm good. You know, the thing that's that I found out for myself is just a helpful tip, and then I put it on the Facebook group too. Was there are different things over the years that I have wanted to go back on. You know, maybe for me it's iron or female hormones, or maybe it's GLP ones, or, you know, testosterone, or whatever the subject is that you've been having. I was really struggling to find the subject. And when I actually went and searched in the podcast and looked in my library, Ah, there they all are, there was with, yeah, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:08:57
I had a decision to make. I started making it during I've said, I feel like I've said COVID 1000 times today, but like during COVID, I've said this before, but I feel like when it first started, overwhelmingly podcasters thought, Oh, well, people aren't going to be in their cars anymore, and that's where they listen to the podcast. And those people started scaling back on their content. And I was like, I think people are gonna have a lot more time, and I'm gonna make more I had more time, and they had more time. And I thought there's so many other things I'd like to talk about, like, you have no idea. Like, I'll sit down at the beginning of the year and I'll think, like, I want to talk about this, this and this, this year, and I make a list for myself. And now here it is August, and I'm looking at my list, I'm like, I haven't gotten through half of this yet that's with me putting out five episodes a week. So back when I was doing one and two and three, I felt like I'm never gonna get to everything. I used to have this horrible feeling of like, well, if I put too much content out, that'll bother people. And then during COVID, I was like, All right, here's two. Are you bothered by two? And I would, and luckily for me. I had the Facebook group, I can actually go in there and say, Listen, I just put out two episodes this week. Is that, are you annoyed by that? And people would be like, No, put out more. And I was like, well, here's 30. And they were like, more, and I'm like four, and they're like, five. I'm like, Well, there's only five days, but here take five. And then I started doing these, like, little like, there's some episodes that are, I think of as more, like, not fill in, but they're shorter, you know, or they're more, like, focused on, like, my weight loss story or something like that. I was like, Well, I'm putting that on Wednesday, and I'm taking a episode away for people who don't care about my weight loss thing. Oh, hell, I'll put that out on Saturday. Yeah, people have been really, really lovely about it, and they download and they listen as much as they can. But it just occurred to me at some point. I don't know how crazy this sounds to you, Angel, but when you first start doing this, you feel like everything you record is gold, and you put it out, and you're like, Here everyone will listen to this all the P and I'm finally one day, I was like, everyone's not gonna listen to every episode. So here's five of them. Pick the ones you want, you know. And maybe you won't want, you know, feet on the floor, defining diabetes, but maybe one day, you'll think, God, what is that that people talked about? And you'll go back and find it, and it'll be there for you, you know. So I think of it as a

Speaker 1 1:11:13
lot. That's where I've gotten to too, because I had that guilt feeling like, oh my gosh, I haven't listened to all 1200 of the podcasts. But, you know, I don't know that some of the after dark series pertains to me, you know, or I'm not the type one that's living with it, you know, that it's to them. But I just think it's a very vast resource for everybody to go back to it and find the things you know, or go back to it again. And then the other thing that I really like is, I like the transcript underneath. After I've listened to it. You can do a search and look for keywords that maybe you are, you know, looking for, you can copy and paste and send them to your friends, and, you know, forward to friends and you know. So I do a bit of promotional and advocacy work with your podcast, just by sharing, you know, and that's part of it too, is just getting people educated, helping people along with it. So I think your platform does that.

Scott Benner 1:12:03
I appreciate it. It's hard listen. It's you mean, there are people who help me on the Facebook side, and I don't want to say but they're not full time, like they're not employees or anything like that. But so generally speaking, this has just been me, like, raising a barn by myself, basically as, like, I was like, All right, you know, I put one thing down. I was like, Okay, what does it need? Now, I'll add this to it. You know, what would support?

Speaker 1 1:12:23
Wish we could do the juice box cruise, the juice cruise. But,

Scott Benner 1:12:26
oh, would you really go? That's lovely.

Speaker 1 1:12:28
Oh, yeah, yeah. But children's Congress, you know, I'm kind of weighing and right? What can we do? And, yeah, and without abandoning my husband on the farm completely, because I am in the tractor, I when we were doing some of our loop and learn videos. Or, yeah, Joanne Milo, I usually am, Hey, it's your tractor friend be unloading grain, and

Scott Benner 1:12:50
she really is, yeah, yeah, no, it's another person who's very dedicated to helping people with diabetes. Just there's, they're everywhere. Like, people are, like that are everywhere. They're it's absolutely fantastic. I think you did a good job of representing them today, like all the people out there who are helping. So I really do appreciate that. Well, that's kind of you to say, thank you. No, no, it's i Listen again. You're either lying about this or you're you're literally doing the work of 93 people. So thank you. It's fantastic. You're a force of nature. To be honest,

Speaker 1 1:13:19
I don't feel that way. No. Why? Why would I have a friend that texted me, you know, and I told like, I'm not sure I'm doing the podcast. Maybe I should just give it up to somebody else that go. Maybe they have something you know better than myself to say, and you know, my friend had said, I'll read your book someday. I'm like, I know. Maybe it just takes one person, you know. Maybe you can just inspire one person. I

Scott Benner 1:13:41
need you to be more introspective. Why do you not feel like a force? I mean, you've just described the efforts of you know, a dozen people. Seriously. Are you not able to take that as a compliment? Or do you genuinely not think you're doing enough? I think

Speaker 1 1:13:55
I'm horrible at accepting compliments. Okay? Generally speaking, that's just my personality. You know, you look good today. Oh, thanks. I bought this at, you know, thrift store,

Scott Benner 1:14:08
probably the light, I don't know. Well, listen, this job beat me into taking people's compliments. And I know probably people laugh about that, but you can hear me over the years, just like joking my way through it, because I felt so uncomfortable, you know, like even you talking still about, like, oh, the platform does a good job of making data this available. Like, all I thought about was, I hate making those goddamn transcripts, like, it's such a pain in the ass for me, but like, at the same and I wouldn't read them, because it's not how I would access it. But when people told me it was important, I was like, Okay, it's important. If it's important to them, then it's now it's important to me, and I make it happen. But instead of feeling that when you say it, I just think I hate making the transcripts. Instead of just going, Oh, thank you. I'm glad that works.

Speaker 1 1:14:56
I'll give you one more plug too, that I would. Say that with the advocacy work, one thing that is also very helpful, you know, there's many different resources that you can find. I mean, I do try to do research. I watch, I love to watch Katie Porter, you know, try to take down the PBMs or something like that on Facebook or on YouTube. Excuse me, but you have had some interviews. You know, the orange book I read, listen to that when I had three hours on the way home from a camp with Nina and I had my air pods in, she had it. It was just so fascinating. It's really beneficial for somebody like myself that's doing advocacy work to have these resources outside of it and get kind of that personal, yeah, but in factual too, because you do have to have good resources when you're doing advocacy work. I mean, you can tell your story, but if you're actually trying to make effective change, you do need to have information. And so there's just so much to learn, and I'll never know enough. Yeah, oh, that people. And I'm 52 and it just rolls off of me. Sometimes I

Scott Benner 1:15:56
genuinely think that I'm never gonna understand the PPM thing. I really I feel like I'm there. I just

Speaker 1 1:16:01
say, it's a coconut in a shell game. That's it just feels like that. And I just, I don't know who's gonna crack that nut, but,

Scott Benner 1:16:07
and Scott did a great job of explaining, he's really, but really knowledgeable about it too. And, yeah, and that's the other thing, like, I can't, like, I can't, those

Speaker 1 1:16:16
tabs are still open. I'm still reading through his thing, and I'm really be listening to it, to understand it and let it sink in. Isn't

Scott Benner 1:16:23
it funny too? Because I when I said to him, I'm like, there's more stuff you could come on and talk about. He's like, I don't know, like, what people would be interested in. No, trust me, I'm like, come on and talk about now you can tell him, yeah, nobody believes you. Like, listen. You had the same thing. You're like, oh, I shouldn't go on the podcast. I'll be wasting the space. I tell people all the time, you listen to the show, right? And they're like, yes, and I'm like, did stuff help you? And I'm like, yeah. I'm like, well, your thing will help somebody else. And they're like, Oh, not me. I'm like, everyone thinks, not me, but everyone is the people who helps everyone

Speaker 1 1:16:50
else, if not you, then who exactly. I also

Scott Benner 1:16:54
want to thank you very directly for saying rut about 20 minutes into this was my favorite. It's my favorite part of the right, yeah, you said you wanted to say root. You don't understand that. You said root because you're, like, because you're from the Midwest, but Right?

Speaker 1 1:17:09
Well, and I went to international music camp, which is the border in Canada and North Dakota. And so we, you know, we had the Canadians, the roof. Is it roof?

Scott Benner 1:17:17
Oh, the roof, roof, roof. Thing is fantastic. But No, you said rut. And I was like, Oh, that's fantastic. I didn't stop you because, yes, oh, please don't. Thank

Speaker 1 1:17:26
you. I told you my accent might be out there, but I I've gotten used to yours after listening for quite a long time. Thank you. The Jersey accent.

Scott Benner 1:17:33
Is it jersey? I don't know. I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia. I don't know what it is. It's something, but no, it's definitely something that's we're all something. It's easy to point out, because I can't say water or water, or I don't know exactly how to say it. Obviously, my

Speaker 1 1:17:46
mom grew up saying hearing your mom say Warsh, and instead of wash, and so she gets very upset when I say that. But I think it's kind of cool. It's that German whorsch,

Scott Benner 1:17:55
the Warsh, yeah, well, so then you might hear a little bit of that with me, because my grandmother was Pennsylvania Dutch. So, like, I've said that before on here. I said, like, I knew what that meant. Oh, she's German. It's people in Pennsylvania who are sort of like Mennonites. They're German descent. Yes, we have Germans from Russia and North Dakota. Of course, you do. People are everywhere, yeah. But my grandmother, like, she spoke backwards, and I think that's in me a little bit. And what I mean by that, and I always use the same example, because it's the example she taught me when I was little, is she said, you know, if there was a cow on the other side of this fence, and we were supposed to throw it, hey, she would say, throw the cow on the other side of the fence some hay. Like, if it's all just like, backwards, you know? And so I think I have some of that, but I really see it when I'm writing. So when I when I sit to write, writing a book was horrible, because when I sit to write, I write out my thought, and then I always realize that the first thing I wrote is the second part of the thought, and then I have to swap it and put it back together

Speaker 1 1:18:56
again. That happens. I have to cut out about 80% because I wrote a letter to the editor in our local newspaper when I was advocating. And it was just so interesting to me, because I found out in 1922 a congressman actually went to Canada to get insulin when it was discovered for his child. I can't remember the name of him right now, but so I wanted to make this really effective letter to the editor in the paper. And, I, you know, I get flowery and wordy, and it's like, nope, I've got to cut it to, like, 100 words or less. And I was really proud of it when I was done, and it was what it needed to be. But well, and here we are, what an hour and a half in the podcast. So,

Scott Benner 1:19:34
hey, tell me that again. Though, the congressman did what and what was the year? So he, he went to Canada to get insulin for his kid

Speaker 1 1:19:43
from what state, if you learned that life saving medicine was readily available in a neighboring country to save your dying child's life, would you go to any length to find it? One father did in 1922 the son of a wealthy American Congressman smuggled the newly discovered experimental drug we now know as insulin from. Canada so that his son would have a chance at life, and I would have to look, but you can Google it. I didn't reference who the person was. It wasn't Leonard Thompson, because that was the first child that got it, but it wasn't Leonard Thompson. But I just found that so interesting, because I was trying to write an effective letter to the editor, and I'm like, Huh? This is interesting, because now the year 2023, many Americans without wealth, political connections or access to insulin are facing that same reality today. You know, one in four people with diabetes have reported rationing or skipping doses. In North Dakota, we have over 50 South 57,000 people living with diabetes. Wow. So it was just really interesting, and like I said, I tried hard to pare it down, but I just thought, Well, I think that touches a little bit on the reality of what the landscape of our politics are right now. Google that find it out, but you know, it's still happening. Give some

Scott Benner 1:20:52
that'll give people something to do. All right. Angela, thank you for doing this with me. I really appreciate it. Could you hold on for one

Unknown Speaker 1:20:57
second? Yes. Thank you. You.

Scott Benner (1:21:07):A huge thanks to the Contour Next Gen Blood Glucose Meter for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Learn more and get started today at ContourNext.com/Juicebox.

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