#229 You Sank My Battleship

Hey there Eliza……

Eliza has type 1 diabetes and a lot of people who love her.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 229 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's episode is sponsored by real good foods Dexcom dancing for diabetes and Omni pod. To find out more about the sponsors or just to see the Juicebox Podcast online you go to Juicebox podcast.com You can also find links in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening to right now. But if you'd like to be old school about it, go to dancing the number four diabetes.com my on the pod comm forward slash juicebox dexcom.com forward slash juice box or real good foods calm and use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 20% on your entire purchase. Let me just tell you very quickly two things. First of all, of course nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making changes to your medical plan or becoming bold with insulin. And speaking of being bold with insulin, I've done a bold thing myself tried to make a little less work for myself I've combined merge together in fact, the two Facebook pages one for Arden's day, and one for the Juicebox Podcast, they've been merged together into one Facebook page called bold with insulin, please make sure you're following. I don't want to put a challenge out there. But to you Facebook users, I do get a lot of activity on Instagram. Not as much on Facebook. So I mean, if you're feeling competitive with the Instagram folks, get in there. Also if you're considering asking me to your event to speak, my calendar is starting to fill up for 2019 now's the time go to Juicebox podcast.com. Scroll to the bottom. Click on contact send me a note. Today's guest was told about the podcasts by a friend. She listened to it and didn't particularly like it. But guess what? spoilers. She feels differently now.

Denal 2:06
Prime Minister now I am the wife of Nicholas and the mother of three kids. I have Eliza, who is almost 10 years old. And Henry and Alison, who are three and a half year old twins. And my Eliza, my oldest is my type one diabetic.

Unknown Speaker 2:25
There's a lot of numbers there. We get a pen. analyze a pipeline, a couple of twins we've had we don't talk about except the wonder if they're feeling completely left out.

Scott Benner 2:36
How long have you guys been married?

Denal 2:37
We've been married for 20 years, almost 20 years.

Scott Benner 2:41
So let's start a little bit with Eliza story. She's how old again?

Unknown Speaker 2:44
She is almost 10 almost 10

Scott Benner 2:46
diagnosed.

Denal 2:48
When she was three and a half the same age the twins are now No kidding. Okay, so

Scott Benner 2:51
you're you're coming up on seven years are right there.

Denal 2:54
Yeah, we just passed six in August

Scott Benner 2:57

2011. you're rolling along? You've been married for quite some time already. Wow. Yeah. And so what happened there with the I appreciate a good we didn't just get married and have a bunch of babies right away stories. What are you guys doing in the beginning

Denal 3:10
world domination? Yeah, that's what we're aiming for. No, we we actually wanted kids right away. But that did not seem to be in the cards for us. And so we we tried a number of different things. And then we had the opportunity to adopt Eliza. And so we adopted her and became parents.

Scott Benner 3:31
That is what I was getting. Excellent. Yeah. So I'm adopted. Also.

Denal 3:36
I know, I think that's awesome. You want to know something else you have in common with a lot of our friends? Yeah, you're both from Pennsylvania. No kidding. Wow, that's

Scott Benner 3:44
really cool. Have I ever told that whole? Like, I never really told my whole auto adoption story. It's such a bizarre story

Unknown Speaker 3:50
that I'd love to hear. I love adoption story.

Scott Benner 3:52
You want to start with that one? I'll give you the two. I'll give you the two minute version Ready? Okay. A man in South Carolina has a wife and nine children. All right. The children range from 18 years old all the way down to whatever. He gets up one day and decides he's going to go to Pennsylvania and shack up with a different woman that isn't his wife. Oh, wow. And he leaves when this episode is over, and by the way, there's a little bit of bonus conversation at the end. Just some chit chat between me and do now. Anyway when it's over, even if like you have to pee, I don't care, skip that. Go right to dancing for diabetes calm. That's dancing the number for diabetes.com. Now if you sit down to pee, you can do these things at the same time. The wife and her nine children don't like that so much. So the wife packs up the nine children moves them all to Pennsylvania, and goes about getting this man back in their lives. That process takes enough time that her oldest daughter got time to find a job. Meet a boy get pregnant. Wow, have a baby that ends up being me. Wow, the mother does not get the husband back does not allow my birth mother to bring me back to South Carolina puts me up for adoption there. Wow. years. Isn't that nuts, years and years and years later, my wife makes me reach out and try to find out something about my birth parents because we're having kids and she just wants to know the medical side of it. And I am not. I'm not one of the like. I feel like sometimes adoptive people fall into buckets. I'm not I'm not overly bothered or bothered at all about being adopted. So I never even occurred to me, but I did it because my wife asked. So we find an attorney is able to find a sister of the of the mother of my mother. I call her on the phone. And she goes about telling me a story that her mom made her sister give the baby up for adoption, which was very weird to hear yourself talk spoken about like that in the third person, right? And Mater give me away. She said it caused her to become incredibly depressed. She couldn't, couldn't shake that depression her entire life, became morbidly obese, shut herself out of it in her 40s tried to get gastric bypass surgery to get her life back together and died on the operating table. Oh my goodness. Isn't that insane?

Unknown Speaker 6:21
That's so sad.

Scott Benner 6:22
It is incredibly sad. A few moments later, she said if my younger brother calls you about money, and I was like, well, I gotta go. And I. And I've never spoken to them again since.

Unknown Speaker 6:32
Wow.

Scott Benner 6:33
Wow. Now you've now these people were from like, they were literally like, lived in the kind of woods in South Carolina. And you've listened to this podcast for a while. How long? Do you think I would have made it there?

Unknown Speaker 6:45
Yeah, no, I don't.

Scott Benner 6:47
I don't think so. Someone would have accidentally shot me during hunting. At some point. I'm pretty sure. So anyway, I feel pretty lucky because I quite enjoyed my life. So I'm glad it went this way. And I I just I don't know, I've never told anybody that before. So there you go. That is that bizarre story that a person told me on the phone like 10 years ago, as I was my wife standing in the doorway going What's happening? I'm like, it's hard to explain just

Unknown Speaker 7:15
that is really crazy. You know how

Scott Benner 7:17
Eliza ended up with you? Do you know her path?

Denal 7:19
Yeah, her path art. It's a little craziest. I'll try to tell the shortest version of it. We we had been married for about 10 years at that point. And we had gone through some, you know, infertility stuff. And we had started thinking about adoption. Now my younger sister has adopted her oldest child. And and so she had gone through that process before when a friend of hers that's a mutual friend of ours actually called her up and said, Hey, I have a family friend who is looking to place the child for adoption is denault. Thinking about adoption. They've been married for 10 years, like, you know, I'm just making some assumptions here. And so she had contacted my sister, my sister was like, Well, let me do some things on the back end, and figure out if this family is serious about placing, because that's a really hard thing to go through. The only person I've ever told that I was considering adoption was my sister. And so she did all this back stuff, you know, like called the family made sure they were really serious. And then we got a phone call from them saying, hey, are, you know, we are thinking about placing for adoption? And my, you know, my sister was involved in that. And so yeah, it was through this really random string of people. We hadn't even finished our paperwork yet for adoption. We rushed it through. And they live in the other in Pennsylvania. She was a very young girl. And she was raised by her grandparents who were really old and just said, like, you know, we're, we're not gonna be able to raise another baby, and you're not ready to do this. And she agreed, she knew she wasn't ready. And she wanted something better for her daughter that was about to be born. Now, when Eliza was born. She was born in December. And we fully expected to have her place with us then. And the birth mother backed out. And so we were like, my husband was crushed. For me. I was like, Well, I think this is just kind of the impetus to push us to get our paperwork done, because we were kind of dragging her feet on it. And then all of a sudden, next thing we know, we got a phone call three months later, and she was like, I, I'm ready. Now. She, and I'm sorry, can you come tomorrow? And I was like, Oh my gosh, I had nothing.

Scott Benner 9:29
I'm just laughing because apparently it takes about 90 days of not sleeping for a teenager. I really,

Denal 9:37
honestly, like that three, like if you remember when your babies were tiny and three months is like that tipping point, like, right. After three months, they kind of start getting a little bit better. And it gets a little bit easier. So I'm like, I'm so glad she did write

Scott Benner 9:50
that. Yeah. What if she would have made a little longer? Right. And she might have?

Denal 9:53
Yeah, I mean, I think that that it was, it was the right thing for her to do. I mean, she really wasn't in a place. She hadn't graduated high school, she never did end up graduating high school. And her grandfather ended up passing away right after that. And so there was no other, there was no other way for her to really be successful. Well, I

Scott Benner 10:12
can't imagine. I can't imagine anything more difficult. I mean, I've, you know, I've considered it for myself. And now I know the story that you know, of, of my birth mother sort of being forced, basically to just said, Look, we're not taking we didn't, we didn't. I mean, can you imagine when you stop and think about it, you and your nine kids leave to go get your husband back and show back up with not just your you know, your cheating husband, but a baby right now, like, at some point, the apparently the embarrassment line hit her mom, and she was like, I can only go back to South Carolina was so much, you know, baggage. But, but where it really hit me about how difficult it must be to let go of a child like that. Now, I think in Eliza's case, or mine, there's love behind that, like you said, there's absolutely no idea of I can't, I just I know I'm gonna mess this up. And let's not put this baby in that situation. Where it really, really struck me very recently was my father. So not my birth father, but my adopted father did eventually leave my mom when I was 13. And when my brothers were eight, and three, yeah, well, so we have 13, eight, and three, and my dad left. And he never really was all that involved with us throughout his life. And he passed away. And you know, we saw him a little bit towards the end. And that was it. Where it really struck me was after I dropped my son off at college, and I was driving home and couldn't stop. Like, I wasn't full out like, like movie crying. I just, I couldn't stop like the tears from flowing out of my eyes while I was driving. And I left my son in possibly one of the best situations that an 18 year old boy could be in. And I thought, if this is this difficult for me, why was it so easy for my dad? Like, that was the first time that struck me, I was like, oh, gosh, he really did not care about us all that much. Because, like, at least that's how it felt to me. Because, you know, because how could it have been this easy for him? You know, and that was the part that's where it really struck me. I was like, if it's this hard for me, just to leave my son two and a half hours from here, knowing I'm going to see him next week, then what was my what was going through my father's head when he was like, Okay, I'm out of here. You know, like, that was really, really a strange thing for me. But anyway, I don't know about you, but sad conversations about adopted children. And the families that had to give them away, make me want to eat low carb. So that's why we're going to talk about real good foods calm right now. Now, I don't know if you understand this or not, but real good foods calm when you use the offer code juicebox. at checkout, you In fact, will save 20% on your entire order. A couple that with the idea that real good foods has free shipping. And we're starting to look at quite a little deal here. Now I got a note recently from someone from Arizona who said, You know, I wanted to order but I don't know about the warm weather and shipping frozen stuff. Do not worry real good foods, knows how to ship frozen. They're amazing at it. As a matter of fact, just yesterday, I got a shipment in the mail of some of their new food offerings, which I'd like to tell you about right now. Of course, you already know about the breakfast sandwiches, the chicken cross feeds, the cauliflower crust pizza, the enchiladas poppers and chicken crust pizza. But have you heard about the brand new chicken alfredo and marinara and cheese? Italian entrees. Oh, oh, you have not? Huh? You just heard about this. Now, you're probably gonna want to go to real good foods calm and check it out. When you get there. And you see those entrees. And the brand new breakfast sandwich is looking so good. Just you know, clicky clicky into the cart, put them in there, throw in some cauliflower crust pizza and a couple of poppers. And when you're done and you hit and checkout real good foods once you do use the offer code juice box, and when you do, it will take 20% off of your order real good foods comm use the offer code juice box.

Denal 14:09
You know, we felt that a little bit when we had Eliza placed with us you know that very next day. I was like, Oh my gosh, she feels like my daughter. Like this is my child. I felt an ownership in a and a love for her that was so strong. And for the next year and a half we actually battled the birth father a little bit and the idea of her being taken from me I was like, but she's mine. You can't take something that belongs to me, you know? So I understand. Like, I can't imagine just walking away from that.

Scott Benner 14:39
Okay, so no one knows it. But you were nervous when we started. Are you nervous now I made you comfortable.

Denal 14:45
I'm coming down. I'm coming down.

Unknown Speaker 14:49
So

Denal 14:50
I'm a high strung person. Anyway, Scott. So this is gonna be nervous the whole time.

Scott Benner 14:55
I think that a lot of people I've interviewed in the past just heard you say that. thought, Oh my gosh, me too. Okay, you have to have enough energy and confidence to reach out to be on the podcast, right? That's, that in itself is pretty difficult. So you go through all of this and get a baby. And then three years old, three and a half years old and she develops type one. Now this is interesting, because you're you have no, it's not like any of the family history that you have. Right? not worried about it. Right? It never even occurred to you. So how does it present?

Denal 15:29
So it happened really fast. And for some reason, I think so we didn't know the birth father had type one. And but that was, it was a very strange way that we kind of knew that. And so that was kind of in the back of my mind, although I never googled the tsys. I never looked into it. So I knew nothing about it, other than I had an acquaintance A long time ago that had type one. But I knew enough that when some symptoms started presenting themselves, like, I figured it out rather quickly. And within a week of her, I never googled it, which is stupid of me, because within a week of it, I knew that's what it was. But I didn't take it very seriously. I thought it would be like one of those things where, you know, you went into your doctor, and you're like, Hey, I think she has diabetes. And they're like, okay, let's give you the name of a specialist. And you'll go through that specialist will take three months, and then you'll get things figured out. And I had no idea. So you know, she's wedding suddenly wetting the bed, and she's drinking a ton. And she's so hungry. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, you know, what is going on? First, we start cutting off water, then we start, you know, then it dawns on me like, this is this is diabetes. And so we had an appointment already scheduled for preschool. And so I was already going to see the doctor. And I thought, well, I'll just ask about it then. And, and so I took her into that appointment, and it was a nurse practitioner, and at the end of all of the things, you know, checking blood pressure and all of that she asked, Is there any questions that you have? And I said, you know, we might want to check for diabetes, because she's been peeing a lot. And she's been drinking a lot. And she kind of looked at me with this look like, Did you really just wait to the end of our appointment for this? And I was like, You know what, yeah,

Scott Benner 17:10
she could have an infection from a splinter. That's where I'd like to start. Yeah. Did you in the back of your mind? Did

Denal 17:16
you just not want someone to tell you that she had diabetes? I guess I just thought it was gonna be something like, you know, all the other times that you ever take your child in for something, you know, like, she had a speech delay. And so, you know, we took her in, and they're like, Okay, well, you're going to call this specialist. And then three months later, you'll have an appointment, they'll tell you what to do. And, you know, it wasn't, I just think it would be like that I it wasn't that I was trying to deny it. I just didn't know so serious. And so when she said, Okay, we'll do a quick urine check. And, you know, and then came back in the room with like, this pale face, and she says, she has ketones. And I was like, I don't know what that means. And she said, it means that she has diabetes, and you're on your way to the emergency room. And I was like, that's when the gravity of it hit me like the emergency room. Why? And I was like, Can I stop by home. And she's like, is home on the way to the emergency room. And I was like, kinda, and she's like, you can go grab something, but we've already called them they've got a room for you. And I was like, Oh, so I call my husband and I was like, We're on our way to the emergency room with Eliza. And he's like, wait for me. I'll be there in a few minutes. And so he works in DC. And he jumps on the metro and comes home and at home. I'm sitting there, you know, waiting for him. It's about 45 minutes for him to get there. And I'm trying to explain to my little three year old what's happening to her. She's really calm about it, but she's hungry. And they told us not to feeder. And, and I'm like, well, you have diabetes and my understanding of diabetes at this point is you can't eat sugar, almost like it's an allergy. You know, like, you're going to be you're allergic to sugar now. And so she starts asking me questions. Mom, can I still eat pickles? Can I still eat olives? These are her favorite foods. And so I grabbed a jar of pickles out of the fridge and a great jar of olives. And I'm not looking at carbs because I had no idea. No idea. But I am concerned about sugar. So I'm looking at the ingredients. I'm like, oh, sugar, and then she goes Mom, can I have honey? And I was like, I don't know. Let's look and so I grabbed the honey. And did you know that there's no honey? There's no sugar in honey.

Scott Benner 19:22
Plenty of carbs. Just no actual.

Denal 19:25
Like you can have honey and I'm like I'm converting all my recipes. Now to have honey in your mind. Right? Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 19:34
Understand, I imagine that this episode is called pickles and honey, right? We're going from here but but so so so you're so that's By the way, bizarre and beautiful. At the same time we were you having this like, was it so the hunger. That's what I want to talk about. I remember the day before we figured out Arden had type one. She stood with this like thousand yards. They're on her face in front, in front of a plate of food eating it. Like Did you have you seen the original Jurassic Park movie? Yeah, I know when the two little kids climb over the fence, the little boy gets electrocuted. They end up back in the in kind of like the way all the food is. And they stand there like, like monsters and shove the food into their mouth. Yeah, that's how hard it was eating sheet 1000 yard stare like she'd just been electrocuted. And she was just reaching at the plate grabbing food with her hand and shoving it in her mouth over and over again. And I was looking.

Unknown Speaker 20:28
I couldn't see her full enough.

Unknown Speaker 20:29
Yeah, right.

Denal 20:30
I know. That's exactly I was like, you're eating more food than I am. I'm a full grown human. And you're this little tiny three year old and you're just shoving it in and that in the amount of water to it was like, Oh my gosh, No wonder you're wetting the bed. Knock it off. You know,

Scott Benner 20:44
wherever you look back. Arden's eating all that food, like you said massive amounts of food, not eliminating it and losing weight. Yeah, right. It was like there was a, you know, like an alien enter. Which there was that

Unknown Speaker 20:57
right? So

Scott Benner 20:59
Well, okay, so you you and your pick? Did you just tell me where the pickles in the car with you while you're driving?

Denal 21:05
They were not I should have. Now I look back and I'm like, I wish I would have given her some food because she was so hungry. And they wouldn't let her eat until like four hours later. And the whole time. She's like, Mom, I'm hungry. I'm hungry. And a hungry child, to me is like the worst thing in the world. And so to have her be telling me she's hungry made me feel just so sad inside. It did. And so, you know, then the doctor comes in and bless our doctors hard. She's an amazing woman. She comes in and first question Eliza asks is can I olives and pickles and honey? And our doctor said, Of course you can. You can eat anything you want. You're going to figure out how to cover those carbs. And like this weight came off of my shoulders to have like, Oh, she's like, nothing's going to change. You just have to cover the carbs. And I was like, oh, my goodness,

Scott Benner 21:51
nothing changed and nothing changed at all. Everything's exactly the same. Right? It's all

Denal 21:54
the same, right? It's all good. You know, I mean, obviously, like then we had a lot of discussions about what would change but it was not like, Hey, no, you can't have these things anymore. Your life is going to continue on and you're going to be able to eat these foods, you're just gonna have to figure out how to how to cover those carbs.

Scott Benner 22:09
So So what did they send you home with to do that job?

Denal 22:13
We were on MDI and on fingerprick for a long time, Hema log and Lantus. And then we, the push to get a pump came because Eliza said to us at one point, I don't like shots anymore. And so I started looking into pumps. And then they the insurance decided that they wanted to change us from lantis to love Amir, and it was going to change to from one shot to two shots a day. And I was like, I can't now tell her when she's saying to us no more shots. I can't shoot another one. Yeah, add another one in there. And so we looked at pumps, and we did land on the on the pod. And we have never looked back. We love that pump so much. Arden needed an injection the other day, which hasn't happened in a really, really long time. And I know she looks right at me like well, what are we doing? Oh, yeah,

Scott Benner 23:02
I was like, we just have to just inject this. I'm checking, trying to check to see if her her site was not doing what I thought it was doing. Or if it was her period coming in. It was it was her period coming this site was fine. So, but she still she looked at that needle like Hey, buddy, I noticed you're walking towards me with a needle.

Denal 23:22
Yeah, you should see Eliza okay. So we did MDI for like, two, three years, and she was fine. But you should see what happens now when a flu shot has to happen. We have to hold that girl down to get her a flu shot. like Oh, girl, I don't know why you're being so wimpy about this. You're a tougher golden this

Scott Benner 23:38
absolutely happened to art in the same way she was she did injections from two years old till four. And you know, never batted an eye at it. I mean, after the beginning when you had to, like kind of sit on her once in a while. But I mean, once you got into the role, it was no big deal. But then she didn't do it for years. And then you know, go to the endo every he'll get that blood test once a year. And you know, and and nothing, no problems, no problems. All of a sudden, she's about nine years old. And she just went off like a like a, like a crackhead ninja in the office. She was like up on the table like kicking and had her arms go and then she was like, get away. And we did I did take her out of the room like what what's happening? And she's like, I don't want her to take my button. Like when we do this, like, like, What are you talking about? Like, you know, like, and I couldn't I take her in another room. calm her down. The nurse pretty much had to like armbar to get it finished and the next couple of blood tests after that. progressively got better, but they were bad for a while.

Denal 24:38
Oh, yeah, we've had to bribe her with so many things just to be able to get her to get that blood drive done. And oh my gosh, it's crazy. And I had no idea how strong her legs were until I got kicked by her. That girl's got some strong legs.

Scott Benner 24:52
craziest thing is that you know, maybe two blood tests ago you know three years into this like slow titration from you know, crazy crack head ninja back to normal again, and and she just started explaining to the phlebotomist that because you have for a couple years, I don't know what happened, but it was freaking me out. And the woman's like, okay, now she goes, I don't love it now, but I'm okay. So I don't know what happened gets better. Good. Yeah, she must have just hit like some sort of magical limit about being stuck with a needle and was like, that's it. It's over. But She's good. She's good again. I mean, good. What is good mean? I have to get right. I'm having a procedure next week, I have to have a little blood taken for every day I get up. I'm like, I'm gonna go get that blood draw done tonight. I don't know. No one's looking for me.

Denal 25:37
Well, I think about my other my two little ones that are the same age that Eliza was when she was diagnosed. And I'm like, there is no way that either one of those would handle the things that she has handled. She is so much stronger than the two of them. So thank goodness, I mean, if it was going to have to happen to one of my kids, Eliza is the one to have it happen to because she's so much more brave and strong than these other two little wimpy kids. So

Scott Benner 25:59
what if Eliza's not great, but all the other two are just a real mess? What could that

Denal 26:04
might be? This could be true.

Scott Benner 26:07
So you have twins are those? Did you take some drugs to make the babies?

Denal 26:15
We we took lots of drugs. Gotcha. Okay, isn't it? Yeah, they're IVF. Babies. It's funny because we have we have a lot of twins in our family. My sister has a set of twins. I have sisters who are twins. And so we've got a lot of twins. So when people ask me like, Oh, do twins run in your family? I can say yes, without having to get into the whole IVF thing. But that is how they were created was to right? Yes. That's how

Scott Benner 26:36
you something that you said earlier that struck me so strongly, but it didn't fit into the conversation anywhere was that someone surmised? Because you had been married about 11 years without kids? were having trouble conceiving? Like, wow, I didn't realize that if you didn't have babies, and you've been married for certain amount of time, there was a portion of the population that just assumed you were trying it wasn't working out. Like I couldn't have been possible that you just didn't, you weren't having kids on purpose. It's just a very interesting leap that someone made. You know, I

Denal 27:05
think that, you know, obviously, it was spoken about the community in which I am a part of, and I think that in that community family is a really big deal. And so obviously, you know, that's something that I and this girl knew me too. And so she knew that we had a goal of having children.

Scott Benner 27:22
So yeah, so now I realized that before we officially started the podcast, we talked about this, we haven't talked about it in the body of the podcast. You are You are somehow again, no one is pre screened before they come on the podcast is slowly becoming the diabetes Mormon podcast, so so so within your religion, not having kids for that long is

Denal 27:44
like, it's a flag. For sure. You know, it's not like everybody must have this many kids at the certain time. But you know, it's something that we do put placed an emphasis on and having kids is important and, and it was for us, you know, like we really wanted a family. When we first got married, I think my husband said I want a dozen kids. And I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's start with less a few less and then if you need to figure out how to have more than that. We'll figure that out. But

Scott Benner 28:08
we'll start taking babies at the mall, but I'm not making babies.

Denal 28:13
I actually did say like, I think I could probably do six but then the rest will have to figure out how long they come in because I don't think my body can do more than that. It turns out I'm not very good at making them at all in general and so one pregnancy was enough for me I have three kids from one pregnancy we're good to go. Good job.

Scott Benner 28:31
Okay. Oh my gosh. So how how? Just made me laugh. How old is Eliza when you decide pump and is it pump? First? You're using the CGM.

Denal 28:40
We are using CGM. We just switch to the to sex and we love it.

Scott Benner 28:46
How would you like to hear how marketing people talk about the Dexcom g sex, let's say

Unknown Speaker 28:50
no idea where that numbers headed up. For now. CGM is more like a story. It stands for continuous glucose monitoring. And the

Scott Benner 28:58
Oh, that's nice. But now let's talk about the Dexcom g six like people like those who understand the battle. In the end, you need to know which way your blood sugar is moving, how fast it's getting there. And that is exactly what the Dexcom g six brings to you. Recently, I've been fine tuning ardens bazel programs, and I'm doing that with the information I'm getting back to the Dexcom half an hour ago, her blood sugar was trying to get low, but it never did. Why? Because Dexcom told us it was coming. And Arden was able to go get her nighttime snack at the exact right time to not only stop below, but to create a nice smooth transition from the blood sugar that was dropping to a nice stable blood sugar up let me look and tell you 97 Not only does Dexcom show you the direction your blood sugar's moving and how fast it's going. But it allows you to see those things remotely so Arden was in the shower as her blood sugar started getting low. I saw that on my phone. And by the time I got the Arden to tell her she was telling me Hey, that my blood sugar is getting lower. I'm gonna have that snack now. That amazing. Alright, listen, you You can get the dexcom share and follow on Android or iPhone. And you can find out all about the Dexcom g six by going to dexcom.com forward slash juice box. Because I have a tiny bit of time here at the end, I want to tell you that the Dexcom g five CGM system is now covered under Medicare for people living with type one or type two diabetes. You definitely should check out the CGM that's helped me keep Arden say one see between 5.2 and 6.2. For five straight years. The links you're going to need are at Juicebox Podcast comm we're in the show notes of your podcast app.

Denal 30:36
on here, so we did pump first when she was in first grade, we got the Omni pod and second grade. We did the CGM. So yeah, and we've we have loved it.

Scott Benner 30:48
When did you find the podcast?

Denal 30:51
So I found the podcast? That's a great question. Because what happened is I, I, I've always felt like I've been pretty awesome with diabetes. Right? I'm good at this. Our agency has always been around seven. And I joined like the beyond type one community. And I always felt like I was kind of like the person like helping people understand things a little bit. I kind of knew the answers. And, and that we've even been asked to be a mentor, and you know, through our, our office, and our endocrinologist office. And so I've always felt like, you know, I've got this, I'm doing pretty good. Yeah, there's things that kicked my butt every once in a while. But most the time, I felt pretty on top of the world. But then all of a sudden, allies was having these nighttime highs, and I could not get them down, she would hit 250. And I would throw insulin at her all night long. And I could not get her down. And so that made me start looking at the way other people were kind of managing diabetes. And there was a couple people online that were having these amazing numbers, that I was like this person, they're a crankcase, how are they even getting that they're just way too extreme for me. And so I kept looking and I remembered that a friend of mine is going to be listening to this too. So Hylia had mentioned your podcast. And I had never even listened to like any podcast before. I was like, let's give it a try. So I listened and I it was one of the first episodes and I listened to I probably listened to like two or three. And honestly, Scott, if I'm being honest, I thought you were kind of a crap case to the first time I listened to you. I was like this guy is extreme. It's fine if he manages his daughter that way, but I don't want to kill mine. So and So you were a little extreme, but some of the things you said made sense. And one of the first episodes I listened to was Steven ponders. And I was like, Okay, here's yet another voice saying kind of the same thing Scott is saying, and these other people on the beyond type one. And so I was like, Okay, I'm gonna take some of these things, and try to you know, make her a one clo better to make these 19 highs stop. And, and so I started kind of applying those things. And then there was like this one moment, this one key moment, that really forced my hand and made me realize that I had to follow some of the things that you were suggesting. And we were playing a license or playing a board game. We were playing battleship, do you know that game? worse? Yeah, so so I've just been teaching her the game, she had never played it before. And, and she was understanding it, you know, she's, she's the smart little girl, she can understand this game. And you know, you've got the part up above, that's where you put your, you know, your ships, and yeah, your pegs that you're guessing to the other person, then your slips below. And then you've got your cross lines that you've got to, you know, line up and everything of J 10, or whatever. And she was getting that she was having a fun time. And we started off with blood sugar was was around 100. And within the next like 45 minutes to an hour of playing this game, her blood sugar went from 100 to about 200. And during that time, her cognitive reasoning diminished the entire time we were playing that game. And I was like, I can't do this to her anymore. I cannot let her get shot. He struggles a little bit in school. And I was like, it's her blood sugar is an average of 150, which is what a Wednesday of seven is. That means that there's a lot of times that she's sitting at 200, which I our threshold on Dexcom was 200 I wasn't taking action. It's not like I ever looked at 185 and said, Oh, good job. I nailed that. I always knew that was high, but I wasn't taking any action. Unless it was meal time and then I'd correct it. But, you know, I'd let her sit there. And because it wasn't above that threshold of 200 and

Scott Benner 34:42
that moment yourself into being okay with

Denal 34:45
Yeah. And just, you know, just like I wasn't told anything different either, you know, and so, I at that moment, I was like, okay, you know, one of the things Scott does is he lowers his specials. So we lowered that threshold back down. I think I lowered it at that. Point to 150. And, and it was amazing the mental shift that happened in my brain. At that point, I was like we are, I'm taking action all of a sudden, and it's not taking I crashed a couple times because it does not take as much insulin to bring down a 150 as it does a 250. And so, you know, I've crushed her a couple of times and learn to slow down on that. I'm sorry, I'm getting another call. And I'm gonna have to go out there and it's stopped.

Scott Benner 35:28
I couldn't even tell. Okay.

Denal 35:31
Yeah, so so that was the first thing that I did. The second thing was starting to Pre-Bolus her. And I couldn't believe what a difference that made. And so we went into the endo, after a couple months of following some of your advice, went from a seven to a 6.2. And my endo was like, and she comes into the office, she's like, I'm sorry, I'm late. And I was like, I didn't even notice. And she was like, I was walking around with your chart showing all the other endos your daughter's chart? And I was like, and she goes, she goes, What have you been doing? And I was like listening to a podcast. And she's like,

Scott Benner 36:07
she was probably walking around trying to take credit with the other kids, they probably have some sort of a bet in the back office, you probably put her over she wanted the gift card or something like that. Which by the way, is a fantastic idea. I don't worry, yeah, they could be playing like some sort of a game with all their patients. Well, well, first of all, I'm glad you capitalist thing, you know, and I get how, if you come in cold, especially now that the podcast is older, like back in the beginning, if you would have come in in the beginning, you would have just been like growing along with me, while I was kind of like fleshing out the ideas. And I would have seen more like you searching and less like the person who had already gotten to the spot, you know, right. And so I get that I, you know, I just got back from speaking somewhere. And I started by saying, this is gonna sound crazy to everybody in the room. But Type One Diabetes is mostly about Pre-Bolus, seeing and understanding the balance between timing and amount. And that's really kind of it. Like, there's more than that. But that's the, to me, that's the seed of where it all starts. You know, and it's just, you know, to hear somebody say, my kids, a one sees in the fives when yours is good. And yours was good. You know, at seven. That was that that does sound insane. I hear from a lot of people Oh, I just figured you were low carb when I saw that at first. I get that there's a barrier to, to wanting to hear more. But I'm glad you did. It sounds like it's going really well for you. So that's really, the key to the whole thing for you is been Pre-Bolus Singh and not letting her blood sugar get too high before you act.

Denal 37:39
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, those two things alone have changed so much about what we do. And, and, you know, there's been these moments where she has, I can tell that she just feels better. And you know, and when she gets high now she recognizes that and she even has started taking action. You know, she'll give herself a bolus, she's crushed herself a couple of times. And I've had to tell her, like, let's not just jump to two units there, let's, you know, now the rule is she has to follow whatever the pump says, you know, when she puts her blood sugar in, if she's feeling high, she did it once. And we're on a date. And she was home with the babysitter and she saw that, that she was like at 150. And I kind of purposely ran her a little bit high just because I didn't want to deal with we've been having these like, lows right before bedtime. It sounds like I'm not having this happen. So I ran it a little bit higher so that I could just be on a date with my husband and I'm sitting in the theater and all of a sudden I'm getting this, you know, alarm that she's like having a 50 and I'm like what this is not supposed to be happening and turns out she had decided to give herself two units where I would have given her a half for that

Scott Benner 38:40
trial. She's gonna I mean, that's another way to learn, you know, is to kind of her own little experience. It's cool that she feels like you know, like she wants to do something about it. I will tell you that like Hold on tight because you know, everybody says we told you know wait till it happens wait till they hit that spot that age you know it's harder with girls and is with boys you know on because of like, hormones and blood sugars and stuff and I'm telling you I'm I'm four months into it being harder. And yeah, and right now all it means is it's less predictable than it had been in the past. Staying fluid is more important than ever, and I am really really seeing how much benefit bazel rates can bring. Because it's they've been a huge help to me. Moving forward doubling basals moving Basil's way up when she's RNNs resistant from her insulin. It really is. It's nuts and it lasts for so long. Like even when I did an interview a while back with somebody and we all we talked about was like, you know menstruation and how it worked. I was like, Oh, so like, weeks before the actual you know, period like this. I'm like, Okay, I get it. I get it like it's okay, now that it's happening. I'm telling you those years moving up to this those as hard as they seemed those years Your training will yours. So

Denal 40:01
I'm just hoping that horizon or dash or whatever it is, it's coming from Omni pod and her in in the Dexcom comes out before I had to deal with any.

Scott Benner 40:10
I guess you will probably honestly age wise you'll it'll it should be. It should beat her. It should get here before her maturity time, I guess.

Unknown Speaker 40:19
I hope so. I hope so I

Scott Benner 40:21
think it but it really has been working for me. I mean, I just had to set up a new bazel program that I didn't name anything, but it was the one I'm thinking this is the period bazel program. It takes her basal rate from like 1.4 to three an hour. Oh, wow. And that's enough to hold things down. So it was really bad bent my mind a little bit when I started doing it. It took me I will tell you, that was mentioned this the other day to somebody. I found myself sitting in my house very quietly one day thinking, Okay, when this happens to other people, what do I tell them to do? I really did think like, Okay, if this was somebody if this was somebody else talking to me, what would I say to do?

Unknown Speaker 41:08
You know, and so I just took your own advice. But not

Scott Benner 41:11
I don't mean it like that. I don't mean it, like in a douchey way What I mean is like, I mean like that. It was you know, things have been going along so well for so long that I was just on like I was on cruise control. And I didn't I didn't have to make any grand adjustments. And then a couple of years prior, like I'm telling you, I just did what I did. I did what I say on this podcast and her a one season two fives, it's like no big deal. And then all of a sudden, it was a big deal. And and I had to like it wasn't just like little bump and nudge changes, like I have to make like a, like a wholesale change here to something I'm doing. What would I say to someone else? And I thought, Well, what I would say to someone else's if their blood sugar's high, there's not enough insulin, or it's Miss time or combination of both. So I was like more insulin and it wasn't just enough to bolus more. And when and then I was like, Oh my god, I'm doing all this big bolus and the blood sugar is not coming down. And then I thought, right, because when you're bolusing, too much, your bazel is not high enough. And I was like, Oh, that's a thing I say on the podcast. And so. So I made all the adjustments and our blood sugar came back down. I was like, no kidding, that podcast works. Like, it floored me because it's something that from the outside. You know what I mean? Like, it's something you see differently than I see. And yeah, and so I, I don't know, it's hard to put into words, but I actually just stopped myself and think like, what would I do? And, or what would I tell people to do? But it's, it's going well, again, it's a little different. But you know, it should get us through this part. plushies growing you can see it on her she's getting bigger and more mature. Like, you know what you mean? And her boss like thickening and like get everywhere. She's not she's not gonna be a kid much longer. so crazy. Everyone Hold on tight.

Denal 42:53
Yeah, we just had to increase Eliza's bazel at night too, because we were having again, like we got through that little patch six months ago. And I think she's on another growth path growth spurt again, and I just increased her bazel from I think it was 8.5 or point eight, five, to now one. And I think that's a little strong enough to bump it back down. Because this morning, she woke up and she was like at a 63. And I was like that's a little probably lower than I I want you to wake up at. So I think that was a little stronger than it should have been

Scott Benner 43:21
for making the adjustments and paying attention. And that's the part you have to that's the stuff you have to do to be perfectly honest.

Denal 43:27
It is constant. It is

Scott Benner 43:29
it really it really is there's Arden's home today, there's no school today, here. It's one of those pretend holidays where teachers are like, I'm being enriched. I'm like, Okay, and so I'm in Arden sleeping in. So there's this possibility in the next like, 15 minutes while we're finishing up, I might actually have to go make an adjustment to her bazel while she's asleep, but I'll let you know.

Denal 43:49
I wish my kids would sleep in that would be so nice. That's I don't know how you have kids that sleep in maybe not. Oh, it's miserable.

Scott Benner 43:57
That's a hard Do you have you considered threatening them? Because I have to. Because that's that's you can't do that. That's not good at all. I Oh, that's horrible. No, no Arden would sleep her whole life away if she could, if you didn't work she when she's it's interesting. through middle school. You couldn't get her to get up on time for school. It was a constant battle. like you'd have to be in there like shaking her, you know. And for a long time, I couldn't figure that out. Then we realized she had hypothyroidism when she got on Synthroid, that got a little better. So she wasn't as tired. So then I felt bad about that because I thought she was just like, lazy and didn't want to get up. But I think it turns out, it was a thyroid issue. But, but still, for the year and a half after she was on the Synthroid. She still likes to sleep. So but she can get up now. Like now she can actually get up without a problem. And then high school started and it was like a switch flipped. And she's like, I'm gonna be on time in high school all the time. And I was like, Great and she's never been late. Chao pops up and gets dressed and she didn't know how to hurry. Before, does that make sense? Like if you can't, like hurt, like if that it felt like if the house was on fire and people were shooting, she'd be like, this is the pace I'm moving at. And now and now she knows how to look at the clock and think I have to move quicker. And she actually does it on her own without being taught so or being without being told. So hopefully, growth like that will continue because, you know, I think your biggest parenting job is to repeat things over and over again without getting completely frustrated. And I was getting tired of being like, hurry up, hurry up, please hurry up. Please go faster. You're killing me. Why don't you go faster? That finally went away, it'll be replaced with a much bigger problem that probably involves a boy. Good luck with that, guys. Yeah, I'm sure it's gonna go horribly. Anyway, okay. So you're you're doing like you're at a seven. And you start just making small adjustments like Pre-Bolus saying and being a little more aggressive. And the one thing again that I can't stress enough. I, your high mark for Dexcom where you alarm at a high. The lower you bring that down, the quicker you can react with less insulin, the less lows you get later, the less highs you're half right. In the 11 years that Arden has been using the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, it's always felt like it was made just for us. It just fits her life. It fits her needs. And it's easy. The last time her pump needed to be changed the timing of it was not great for school, we had put the pump on I think on a Saturday in the afternoon. And of course, it needed to be changed on the school day, then in the afternoon, still while Arden was at school. So I made this sort of like split second decision as we were going out the door for school, like we have to change your pump now. Because otherwise, it's going to need to be changed while you're at school. So come here real quick. And I always wish you guys could watch while we're doing that the pump change is just so simple insulin, fill it, push the button it Prime's itself, needle cap off, stick it on push button, click like like it's in, you're all done. I mean, to call the diabetes pitstop would even be unfair. It takes no time whatsoever to change an ollie pod. One of the little things I love about it, because it's easy to stand here and tell you about Oh, it's tubeless. And you can swim with it or you can shower with it or you know, you'll always get your baseline. So no matter what you're doing, even if you're liking activities, or climbing up the side of a mountain doesn't matter. But in the end, once you get the pump and you realize it works, and it works in all parts of your life. What's left is how it impacts your days. And the pod just doesn't, it just doesn't get in the way of you being you. I hope you go to Miami pod.com forward slash juicebox. And check out a free no obligation demo of the Omni pod today. The greatest deal in the world they're gonna send you out a free pod you can stick it on see what it feels like wear it. Check it out, really give it the once over you know what I mean? Put it through the paces. Dancing for diabetes.com dancing, the number four diabetes.com do it now. Why not now is almost over doing the podcast. All you have to do is go to dancing for diabetes.com that's gonna fill your heart with goodness. And make the rest of your day better.

Denal 48:25
Yep, absolutely. Yeah, I haven't set now to 140 I heard you lowered serious recently. And I was like, whoa, I'm not sure if I'm ready for a 120 or 125. But we're at 140 now and it's it's pretty it's working pretty well for us in definitely respond. And it's amazing how when you respond when she had said you know, 140 Mark, or you know, if you see it going up rather quickly at 130 or something, you know, you respond to that. But you know, when she hits 140 I'm like I'm gonna nudge that back down. And it works so much better than when I was getting a 200 it was so frustrating at night, I would sit there and watch her going up. And you know, I'm sitting there watching like a 140 to 150 to 161 70 and I'm doing nothing and I'm just gonna go here we go again. Here we go again. And then finally it hits 200 nuns walking up the stairs to give her a bolus and and you know, when I listened to you and I realized like I should be reacting at 140 because I know this is happening. The problem was I couldn't respond to it. Because it would happen sometime between like nine and midnight. And so I never knew when that you know turn would happen. I couldn't just give her a bazel increase. At that point it was going to have to be a bolus because some nights it wouldn't happen. It was this weird growth spurt thing that was happening and but responding to it at 140 made such a big difference and responding to it at 200. So yeah, it's made a huge difference for us and she's waking up in range, which means that she's staying around all day, and huge difference there in great a lot of times the way you start is the way you finish. So Oh absolutely.

Scott Benner 49:54
Yeah, it's you start with a high blood sugar in the whole day can become a rack and warm vice versa. So it is great. It's so much you're describing that, that prices right? mountain climber game, where it's Yoda Lee and he's going up and you're like, it'll stop. It won't fall off the edge. It won't. It always falls off the edge. And, and you're watching a blood sugar climb the same way. Is it an interesting 140 50 6070 8090? Nothing but then it hits the hits the where you said, Oh, hi. And like, well, now I have to do something that is such an arbitrary thing that everyone does. It's crazy. It's like, why is it 200? Like, what if someone would have said that line at 150? You would have stood up at 150?

Denal 50:37
Yeah, yeah. And that's exactly what happened. Once I lowered it, like my brain just switched over like, this is what a high is, you know, and, and it became like a competition to myself, like keeping her down below that, because I was really good at keeping her below that 200 Mark, even if it was 198. You know, now I'm, you know, this competition of keeping it below that 140 Mark, haven't said this in a long time. But if you can keep a blood sugar stable 200, you can keep it stable at 180. If you keep it stable 180 and keep it stable 140. If

Scott Benner 51:03
you go to 140, you can do it at 90, it's all the same thing. It's all the same. The only difference between 90 and 200 is what

Unknown Speaker 51:12
I don't know, what's your fear.

Unknown Speaker 51:15
It's your fear. It's your

Denal 51:17
it's your fear what you've said a million times, I can't believe I didn't just say I'm sorry, don't be upset.

Scott Benner 51:21
It's no, it's your absolute your fear, it's your it's your turn that you can't react quickly enough to stop below if it should happen. The funny thing is, if you're staying around 90, you're using much less insulin to accomplish that. Which makes which makes a low, much less likely.

Denal 51:36
Well, the other thing he said to about lows that made so much sense to me is if you can rescue it with a juice box, if you know how much juice box or Skittles or whatever it is, you know how many carbs it takes to rescue her, you know, then don't be afraid of giving that much insulin. And that makes so much sense to me. So I was like, Oh, you know, I can give her two units of insulin because I know when juicebox is going to take care of that. So that's not a problem. And we're already at, you know, if she's having a really stubborn high, and we're sitting there at 180, and I can't bring it down, like two units is going to be rescued the juice box, let me just throw three at it. Because I need that other unit to like really knock that sucker down.

Scott Benner 52:13
So much. You're such a good listener. And I don't mean like, I don't mean listening to me, I mean, listener of the pie, after I said that, I was like, Oh my God, I've said that to an animal before you're such a good listener. I didn't mean it that way. No, but you really pick this stuff up quickly. So So then my question is, when you start listening, once you get past the, the kind of crappy part where you're like, I'm doing fine. So this guy must be a lunatic. Then once you got past that, did you find that when you were hearing things, you thought, Oh, this is stuff I've thought, in the back of my mind and never given light to? Or was it completely new? Or was it a mix of that?

Denal 52:54
I think it was probably a mix. And you know, without having the I don't know, that boldness factor of being able to say, this is working for somebody else. And if I do it, you know, he's having success. So I can do this too. And I can have success. You know, because we've certainly played around with things before. And I never felt like I had to call my endo to get permission to make changes. I always felt like I had that ability. So this was just like that next step. And that next growth of making changes was to just take it on myself. And, and yeah, and do what you said, Be bold with insulin.

Scott Benner 53:37
And just genuinely grateful that it struck you that way. Because he could have been the opposite. Obviously, you could have listened and just been like, this is stupid and go away. And I realized that that probably happens to more people than I think, you know, who kind of come on and listen for a little bit than think this isn't for me, or, you know, he's doing something I don't understand, or He's full of crap or whatever it ends up being that you think you think right away.

Denal 54:00
I will say though, I have told a lot of people about your podcast, and I have gotten a lot of people, you know, giving me feedback saying this has changed everything. This is so great. And so I i've advocated a lot for you think I deserve a part of your paycheck, I think

Unknown Speaker 54:16
like a magnet.

Denal 54:18
Awesome. No, no, yeah. And it's nice, because, you know, like, even if I had figured this out and come to my own conclusions, I'm not the kind of person to start a podcast or to start, you know, throwing that out there. It's definitely not my passion. But I'm so glad that people like you, that do add this voice to our community because it adds weight. When I give suggestions to other people. Like I said, I've been a mentor for other people at our endocrinologist office and and whenever I say, you know, they'll call me and say, Oh, my son is in high all night and what to do, and I'm like, well, he needs insulin. And then I'm like, Well, you know, let me let me show you what I mean. Go listen to this podcast and this episode. Really explains it. And it's like it gives weight to something that I'm a nobody. They're not going to listen to me. But like, you have a podcast to listen to. Yeah, I can't

Scott Benner 55:07
believe that's the thing.

Denal 55:08
Yeah, well, it is like, right. I mean, you know, I think you've probably seen sometimes I've on Facebook, I'll say yes. Or just like, you know, I've tagged you in posts before and things like that. Yeah. Because I know that, like, my voice is not very strong, but your voice is stronger. And if I can help people through you, that's great. That's really great. And I'm really appreciative that, that you have not let diabetes define you. But you have found definition in having this diagnosis in your family. And I'm, and that's what I think is beautiful about this disease. It's not something that that is something to be mourned, but something to find, I don't have a definition, and, and help other people. And it's a great community that we're a part of,

Scott Benner 55:51
it's wonderful. It's a great thing you're doing by helping other people. And I think you're, you're undervaluing yourself a little bit, because your story is valuable to you. We're where they were, and you're not born. And you're not there anymore, either. Just because, you know, the path that you found came through this doesn't mean you didn't have the the confidence and the nerve to like, look for an answer. Fight, fight through when it didn't make sense. At first keep going like there's a lot you did to get through that, like giving me the credit really is. I don't think it's necessary needed or even completely true. To be perfectly honest. Like if, if, if I would have written all if there was a magic way to write all this down on one sheet of paper, and you would have found that hanging on the wall in your endos. Office, you wouldn't have later thought, Oh, well, that I have to tell people about the person who wrote that on that paper. You don't I mean, like, it's just the problem with diabetes is that it's obviously a multifaceted thing. There's so many variables, and to read about them. It just doesn't do it justice, like these conversations are how it comes out. Like You I don't even know at this point, right. We've been speaking for almost an hour. And I will let this sit for a while I'll go back and edit it out. You'll have said something that I don't remember at this moment that when I go back and listen to it, I think oh, wow, that's incredibly valuable, somebody is going to really get something out of that. And if I would have asked a different person the same question, they wouldn't have said it the way you said it. The way you said it's going to hit somebody in the way I say it's going to hit someone else in the way the person last week said it's going to help and those are the voices that blend it all together to give me credit is to say that, all I really do is I had this idea. I have a way I manage. And then I bring different people together and let them talk about it with me. That's really it. You know, it's it's incredibly valuable. Don't get me wrong.

Unknown Speaker 57:43
It's so powerful.

Scott Benner 57:44
Yeah. But to give me credit for it is ridiculous. Because if I just sat here and talked for an hour, nobody would listen, I would have run out of things to say a long time ago.

Denal 57:52
You know, that's it, you even just decided to do it, I think is really important. And I think it's it's a voice in our community that is, is needed.

Scott Benner 58:01
Well, that's really, that's very kind of you to say, but it's it's exactly for the reason of your bat. It's your battleship story. Like right as you saw your daughter's like you think, Wow, like she started playing this game. She was so good at it. And then her blood sugar went up a little bit, a little more, a little more, and she lost her ability to even reason her way through this game. I can't I can't let this happen to her. Right. That's exactly what you thought. Yeah. I've had feedback from people for so long.

That it that's how it strikes me, I How could I see this happening? And then just go Oh, well, good luck. You know, the other day, I helped a 22 year old girl who's had diabetes, and she was 18 months old. And it took me half an hour to talk to her while I was cooking dinner. And she went from a lifelong struggle to this amazing graph in 24 hours, 24 hours was insane. And I almost

Denal 58:56
I was gonna say I almost wish that I had the opportunity to find a licensed birth father and talk to him too, because there was this moment, when we found out that he had type one. And we had the opportunity to have about a year and a half into our adoption. And we knew that he had type one. And through the birth mother had had mentioned that. And so when we met we have this like big party, they welcome to their home. And we were just having this like good time get known. One of the reasons we wanted to be there was to like really kind of, you know, get some medical history. And so I brought up diabetes to him. I said, Hey, I understand you have type one. And he goes, Oh, no, I used to but I don't really anymore. And I was like, wait, I was like I don't think that's how that works. But I don't know anything about this disease. I'm not going to argue with you. And his mom is sitting right there too. And she was like, Yeah, he was really young when he was diagnosed, but he doesn't really have it anymore. Like, oh, I don't know, I guess maybe they just don't want to talk about it. But now looking back on pictures and some other things that we know about, you know, the birth mother mentioned that he had had seizures that he had had his passed out a few times. And, like, in my mind, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I want so badly to go and like find you and like, help you now, we've lost contact with him a little bit, I probably could, but I don't like, obviously didn't want to talk to me about it. So I'm not going to go and like intrude in their life and be like, now that I'm an expert about diabetes, let me tell you how used to be managing your life, but I see pictures of him. And I'm like, that is exactly how Eliza looks when she's high. And I know you're just high all the time, like you're just not living the best you could be. And I want to, like, share this with you.

Scott Benner 1:00:35
I completely understand. And I think that the, I think the real sadness that we don't talk about too much. And is that this podcast or beyond type one, or any of the other? Many, many really valuable tools that exist, don't reach nearly everybody, you know, there probably are only reaching a fraction of the people who are looking for answers. Like I don't even I don't reach everyone who's out there hoping to find something like this. Right? You know, so how do you reach the people who have given up? And so that's why I think the podcast is, I always wanted to get back to doctors, right? I like I love that you told your endo, the ag learned us on a podcast, because at some point, doctors are gonna start saying the things that we're saying here before you even need a podcast, and then you won't need this. You know, I think that's all it really is needed. And listen, if people want to make decisions moving forward, that don't take the best care of their health, that's absolutely up to them. But they should, that they should at least know the truth. before they start, they shouldn't get stuck in, here's some needles, you'll figure it out. And then a year or two later, they haven't figured it out and they give up or they get depressed or whatever happens. Or your blood sugar, your blood sugar gets so high for so long. You can't even think about it.

Denal 1:01:50
Right? You know, and and you just think that that's what life with diabetes is like, we deal with highs and lows, that's what life is it's never in between. and there is a better way, there is a way that you can have it so that it's not a roller coaster, every single moment, both things happen, we spike up, we go low, those things happen. But it shouldn't look like that every second of every day. And there is a way to figure out how to be better.

Scott Benner 1:02:12
And there is a you know, a way of thinking that a lot of people have which is well I have diabetes. Now that means I'm going to live a shorter amount of time. And they accept that. And then then they once they make that acceptance, and they don't really have to put a ton of effort into the management side because, well, it doesn't matter. Like this is my lot in life. And it's certainly not true. But maybe it's true. Maybe it's true for them maybe for a number of different reasons. They really can't do the things you're doing or the things that I'm doing. And they just go Okay, well, let me just get on this rollercoaster ride as fast as I can until it crashes, and then I'll walk away. You never know, I know somebody with type two diabetes, it takes no care of it whatsoever. And constantly sweating and confused and everything and try to help and you say stuff and they just don't care. Sometimes their spouse gets them back. Again, using the medication, you can see that they completely change. And then not too much longer. And they just give it up again. And that's it. So I mean, not everybody's you know, can't save everybody, I guess. But at the very least I'd like to reach them once and tell them it exists so that they can at least have the option.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:21
Or Absolutely. It's my hope, though.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:24
You're doing a good job, Scott, keep it up.

Scott Benner 1:03:26
Yeah, very cool. I appreciate you saying that. Really. I'm a little tired this week, because I just got done traveling. So I was so happy that you were talking.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:36
I am very chatty,

Scott Benner 1:03:38
not just chatty, don't don't do that to yourself. You were responsive and thoughtfully responsive. So I said something, you were actually listening to what I was saying, and you kept it going, or you who knew what you thought I thought that was fantastic. So I appreciate that. Very, very well. I

Denal 1:03:53
hope I wasn't like to interrupting all the time. I I have a tendency to do that. And I apologize when I talk to every year.

Scott Benner 1:03:59
I don't think No, I think we were having a conversation. It's funny. My wife is a I talk you talk person. She thinks she thinks she gets to say everything she wants to say. And then when she's done you can say everything you want to say. And I think conversations are a little more back and forth. Mainly that's because I can't keep things in my head long enough to let someone else finish before I start talking. So I appreciate that. Sometimes you have to, you know, something comes out of your mouth when someone else I mean, you and I are looking each other right now you can't tell that all the facial cues that you would use in person are gone. So you kind of have to wait and go is he done talking? You know, I I'm doing the same thing. This podcast I was telling somebody the other day. If you really go back and listen through it has made me a much better listener. It really has helped me in ways outside of diabetes to have that is one of them. I'm I'm a much more complete listener. I used to be a person who while you were talking, started formulating what I was going to say next. Instead of letting you finish and seeing if what you said was gonna carry me somewhere else. So I fall out of it once in a while, I'm sure I'm gonna get an email from somebody like you still do that idiot. But I'm trying, okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:11
You really get emails from people saying things like that to you,

Scott Benner 1:05:13
the angry emails are very few and very far between but every once in a while I get them one person really did not like when I call periods lady time that seemed to one eye you talk over people, you think you're you're smarter than other people, you know that kind of stuff. But very, very infrequently. I have to say that. And it's nice. It's nice to get all the feedback. Because you can't obviously can't take the good feedback without without taking the bad stuff. You can't just say, Oh, I must be perfect for those people. So I'm perfect. And I want I really did learn about this years ago, and I've probably mentioned this before, but I wrote a book about parenting. And the first nine professional reviews that came back were also glowing. That like two weeks into the review process. I was walking around my house like I've written a perfect book, obviously. And then the 10th one came, and it was so bad that the publisher called me and said, Listen, there's going to be a review of your book tomorrow. That's not good. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's fine. Don't worry about it. I have nine good ones already. We're on our way. Bhavani goes, No, listen, it's really bad. And I was like, What did the reviewer not like about the book? And he said, Well, basically, I think everything you along, he goes he stopped short of calling your family ugly, but it you know, it was really harsh. And I thought, Okay, well, that won't bother me. And then I read it. And it really bothered me. And I had to figure out how to let it go. It's the first time I realized that if I was going to put something out into the world like that I had to be prepared for the fact that some people would not appreciate how I did it, why I did it, what I did, and that if as long as I was comfortable with what I had done, and did it for the right reasons that I can't, I can't sit around worrying if it didn't strike somebody the right way. So I just do my best. And, you know, I would have to say that 99% of my feedback is all you know, more more like yours than like that. But you got to be ready to like shake it off, or it hit you pretty hard. I went out to dinner after that book review with my, my wife and she said I just sat there. Like, staring Oh, it was like, I was like how could they have hated everything about it? Like there was nothing?

Unknown Speaker 1:07:30
Anyway, anything?

Denal 1:07:30
How about bad? Like wipes away all the goods that was sent to?

Scott Benner 1:07:34
Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. The first night, I thought were just wrong. When I just like though those people who really liked it, they must be stupid, this person knows. And then, you know, a couple days later, you realize it doesn't matter. Like that's the real key to it just really doesn't matter. I'm pleased with what I did. I absolutely did my best for the right reasons. And it's all I can do. So

Denal 1:07:53
I think that happens with diabetes too, right? Like a high altitude. You're like,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:56
I'm the worst at this. I

Denal 1:07:57
can't do this. Oh my gosh, what am I doing? I'm failing. And I've had to, like really stop myself from feeling that way of like, nope, this is diabetes, that you know, heights happen. And it's not because I'm failing. Even if I've had three highs in a row or whatever. I've had to stop myself and say, No, I've had success. I've lowered that from seven to 6.2. We're on the right path. It's okay that, you know, I goofed up I did not Bolus correctly for that Chinese food or whatever it is, you know. Yeah. So yeah, your one failure should not define all your successes,

Scott Benner 1:08:25
you set it almost the way I would have been. So I'm gonna make a slight like, I'm gonna say something about that. So I don't think it's just diabetes in the, in the sense that because I think people could hear that I know what you meant. But I think people get here that and think blood sugars are gonna go up. There's nothing you could ever do about it. That's true, it's going to happen. The truth is, there is something you could have done about it. You just didn't do it. And for for whatever reason, you know, a bazillion reasons it could have happened. But the truth is, is that you can look back at that moment later and think oh, I do see where this came from. And it might help you the next time. I just very strongly believe that it's not a mistake. It's just actionable data for next time. You know, I did something wrong like last night. Arden had I don't back down. I'm true to my word like as hard as Arden's blood sugars been. When she looked at me last night and said, I want to get Chinese food. I was like, let's do it. So. So we did it. And the first four hours after the initial bolus, things were going great. And then she starts going up and I can't figure out what's going on. And I realize I'm on her old bazel program that cuts back at 9am and 9pm. And so by the time I realized that was what was happening, then I started chasing with these, you know, I start chasing with with Bolus and I was like, oh, Scott, come on, it needs to be bazel embolus so then I put her Basal back up rebol list and she came back down, and now you know it, but it took it took a while because it was Chinese food and it got away from me. And so, you know, again, I just I think you have to strip the drama out as best you can. You really have to remove some of your emotions. You can't sit around feeling terrible all the time. Bringing your hands you have to go. Okay, I see what I did here. I won't do that again. And to your point, I might do it again. But I'm not. I'm not gonna make myself crazy about it later,

Unknown Speaker 1:10:09
that that's really cool.

Scott Benner 1:10:11
Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really genuinely appreciate that. I say, do we go over everything you want to go over? You know, I

Denal 1:10:17
think we talked about a lot of really great things. We were going to get into some more stuff about adoption. But I think that that's okay, that we didn't, we didn't get there. So

Scott Benner 1:10:27
all right, well, maybe next time I like to having you on. Did you love that one as much as I did? I can't hear you. But I would assume you're saying yes. Thanks very much at dancing for diabetes, real good foods on the pod and Dexcom. Go to dexcom.com forward slash juice box to find out about the G six continuous glucose monitor. Good real good foods calm and use the offer code juice box to save 20% of your entire purchase. Would you like a free no obligation demo of the Omni pod? Of course you would Miami pod.com forward slash juicebox. And don't forget to fill your heart with goodness at dancing for diabetes.com that's dancing the number four diabetes.com. If you can't remember any of those links are Juicebox podcast.com. Or right there the show notes of the podcast player that you're using now. Please don't forget to find the bold with insulin Facebook page and like it. Don't forget to leave a rating and review on iTunes. And don't forget to tell a friend about the Juicebox Podcast. And now the conversation that I had before we started recording, except I was recording. So before we started the podcast proper. So I know you're nervous. But I hope it helps you to know that I think I've recorded 230 of these and everyone's nervous at the beginning. Have you listened to any of them?

Denal 1:11:47
Oh, yes. I've listened to quite a few of them.

Scott Benner 1:11:49
Do any of them sound nervous?

Denal 1:11:51
No. A few. But no.

Scott Benner 1:11:54
It's one of my superpowers. I'll make you uncomfortable.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:56
Don't worry. Awesome.

Scott Benner 1:11:57
Okay. One of my superpowers that one and doing the dishes.

Denal 1:12:02
I'm pretty good at that, too. So

Scott Benner 1:12:06
I've taken to just putting my iPad next to me and watching something that I've seen before while I'm doing it. And then my wife said to me that she she was angry about something last I don't know, we've been together a long time. But she sees a cycle of about 20 days where she gets angry at me for nothing. I'm not blaming anything. And and so she seemed angry. And she's like, you just stand there with your iPad. And I was like, would you prefer I just stare at the dish? Like, what happened? I said, Did you could you send some happiness? What happened? Anyway,

Denal 1:12:40
I think it's our job is to find things that annoy us about you and point them out.

Scott Benner 1:12:45
Thank you appreciate it. I was on she she's coming at me one day and I said, you know, our daughter's 14. Like she just started getting her period like she has type one diabetes, or anyone sees in the fives. Like, you would think that just that alone. You could just leave me alone. Not just tried. Like, I just think she's got a happiness sensor on her. If I go over a certain setting, she's like, Oh, no, no, no, buddy.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:12
You matter?

Denal 1:13:12
How long have you been married?

Scott Benner 1:13:13
I would say if I was guessing. This summer, I think it's 23 years.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:20
Okay, that we beat by a few.

Scott Benner 1:13:22
I'm only 47 though, so?

Denal 1:13:24
Well, I've been married 20 and I'm only 42 Wow, you are so

Scott Benner 1:13:30
I could let me play the guessing game of where in the country you live. You're wrong. It's not that

Denal 1:13:39
probably is not. But that's not where I'm from now. Okay, so let me

Scott Benner 1:13:44
just go out. I'm just gonna make my one guest and we're gonna start Are you a Mormon?

Denal 1:13:48
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:53
So many Mormons on this show is

Denal 1:13:57
so weird. I hear it all the time. I'm like, Oh, another one.

Scott Benner 1:14:03
I should get like a free punch card from the church for something.

Denal 1:14:06
What might a person have are typing,

Scott Benner 1:14:09
I would like my own magic underwears. I'm saying

Unknown Speaker 1:14:11
no, no,

Unknown Speaker 1:14:12
I don't get that I can look at you. You're like,

Denal 1:14:15
don't do that. It just takes a little bit of water. And I say okay,

Scott Benner 1:14:20
I don't need it that badly. So anyway, that's, that's, oh my gosh. Now, you know, for the rest of my life. Anytime I heard somebody got married in their early 20s and his kids, I'm gonna be like, you know what I'm thinking here.

Denal 1:14:35
Well, in all fairness, I did not grow up in Utah. I am from Colorado. So I'm not a yutan important distinction. We live in Virginia. So I'm not that far from you.

---

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