#472 After Dark: Living with Bipolar
ADULT TOPIC WARNING. Today's guest is a type 1 living with bipolar disorder and thyroid issues.
TRIGGER WARNING: This is a frank discussion with a female living with bipolar disorder.
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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.
Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to Episode 472 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's show is another in the after dark series, the After Dark series deals with topics that people don't often speak about out loud topics such as, believe me, and type one diabetes, heroin addiction, PTSD, sexual assault, bipolar disorder, divorce, intimacy from both male and female perspectives, in all, a lot of things that you just don't talk about that frequently in mixed company, but we talked about it here on the podcast, I'm always looking for more people to add to the afro dark series. So if you've had an experience that you think fits, or you'd like to talk about something that's normally a little taboo, send me an email.
Even though in Episode 384, we did bipolar disorder and type one diabetes. That episode was with a guest who was much younger, and had different perspectives. Today's guest is a little more mature, has been dealing with type one and bipolar for longer. And to be honest, their story's completely different than the first one we heard. I hope you enjoy it. Please remember, while you're listening that nothing you'll hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. or becoming bold with insulin. You're going to hear short gaps of silence in today's episode. That's where the guests name was spoken, and we later took it out. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is here to help you the SH m h essays national helpline is free, confidential, open 20 473 65. their phone number is 1-800-662-4357 where you can find them at www.samhsa.gov. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor, find out more and get started dexcom.com/juicebox. Want to find out if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash tubeless insulin pump omnipod.com/juicebox. And of course, whenever you want to see good things being done for people with type one diabetes, all you have to do is go to touchedbytypeone.org or find them on Instagram, and Facebook.
Anonymous Speaker 2:54
My name is and I've been diabetic since December 12 1994. So this December will be 27 years and I was diagnosed with bipolar on September of 2003. And I don't work right now. No one else's.
Scott Benner 3:16
It's so hard for people to describe themselves as fascinating. It's my favorite part of the show. I'm going to a clean piece of paper here on my thing. How old were you when the bipolar came?
Unknown Speaker 3:28
2323.
Scott Benner 3:30
And you probably thought, well, things can't possibly get worse. And then next year you got diabetes?
Anonymous Speaker 3:36
No, I was diagnosed with diabetes in 1994.
Scott Benner 3:39
Oh, how much? So how old were you when the diabetes came?
Anonymous Speaker 3:43
I was a month after turning 14.
Scott Benner 3:46
Oh, I'm sorry, 14. Let's just do that joke backwards. So you got diabetes, you probably thought this can't get any worse. And then right? Yeah, nine years later. I got it. Okay, we're good. Okay, now I understand. Oh, wow. So I guess let's talk first, about your recollection of diabetes through your teens in high school, etc. Well, I
Anonymous Speaker 4:09
was just listening to your interview with Caitlin. And we sound very similar. I actually didn't have to go to the hospital. When I was first diagnosed. They told me I was tied to and then pretty soon after that, I went to a place in Denver called the Barbara Davis center. And it was like an intensive Type One Diabetes camp. And then I don't know I remember going to the grocery store. And like bawling because my mom was like, Oh, you can't have this anymore. I can't have this anymore. You have to have sugar free and it was really emotional.
Scott Benner 4:44
Yeah. So your mom took you to the grocery store to show you all the things you couldn't eat.
Unknown Speaker 4:49
Yeah, that's horrible.
Scott Benner 4:50
Oh, nice. That's great guy. Does anyone remember Cocoa Puffs, as if it was a version therapy. Do you think she was like She wasn't smacking you as we're looking at. No.
Anonymous Speaker 5:03
No, I think she was trying to be honest.
Unknown Speaker 5:05
I know I understand hit
Unknown Speaker 5:06
me hard.
Scott Benner 5:07
I can't imagine it wouldn't at 14 like it is interesting. I have to say from a parenting perspective. You try to be very honest with your kids. And honesty comes, I mean, at least for me, it comes in, like sort of a dry adult way, like, hey, you're going to get a test today, they're going to draw blood, this is going to happen, like you're trying to lay it all out. It is almost impossible as an adult to put yourself in a child's shoes when they're hearing it. Like, yeah, you're kind about it, and you want to be gentle. But you also want to be factual. And at the same time, I don't know if there's actually a way to impart some pieces of information that are Stark and an in, like, firm contrast to how you've been living your life prior. without it being upsetting. You know, I mean, can you you don't I mean, like, what, what would the way have been? Exactly. And how long ago was that? You're 14? Would you say? 20? How long ago? Was this? 27 years?
Anonymous Speaker 6:07
Yeah, yeah, this December will be 27. So,
Scott Benner 6:11
I mean, what could anybody have possibly taught your mom about Type One Diabetes 27 years ago? That's probably what they told her. Right?
Unknown Speaker 6:19
Yeah. Yeah.
Anonymous Speaker 6:20
We went to the Barbara Davis center, and the nurse bless her heart was having my parents give her a shot. The poor lady had this arm, and she probably gotten how many shots from people learning. So instead of putting in an orange, she had my parents do it in our arm. And that was an interesting experience, having to deal with arm shots. But then they first put me on regular, right, and NPH and I had to wait 30 minutes before I could eat and my mom would freak out. If we go to a restaurant and the food took a little longer. She's like, she needs to eat something right now. And she would freak out.
Scott Benner 7:01
We're getting to this. So you met a sadistic CDE in Colorado, who was getting strangers to help her with her love of being stuck with needles. It sounds odd.
Unknown Speaker 7:15
Yeah. Like why
Scott Benner 7:16
not a banana or an orange or something? Like why my arm? Do you think? Oh, all right. We can't dig into that. But if that woman's listening, you're on the show. I want you. And is your mom. Is your mom alive? Yes. Okay. Are we going to is she is your mom. reactionary? in general? Or did this really get ahold of her? Do you think?
Anonymous Speaker 7:41
I think it really got a hold of her.
Scott Benner 7:43
Yeah. I can imagine we wish she married then.
Unknown Speaker 7:47
Yes, she still is.
Scott Benner 7:48
So was your dad. Like? Like, I mean, was it like classic? Dad? 30 years ago? Was he like, I'm just gonna go make money while you girls take care of all this? Was it that vibe? Yeah, it was. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 7:59
he nailed it.
Unknown Speaker 8:01
I'm gonna go to work. You guys. Good luck. Yeah, as my dad was like, we see people arguing he just he just like, boom, right out the door.
Scott Benner 8:13
Goodbye. My job. Title doesn't include Listen, everybody yell at each other for some reason. While that sucks? Is there any? Do you guys ever talk about it now in present day?
Anonymous Speaker 8:27
Um, she's still old school and on things that I can't have anything with sugar in it. And when I do, she really kind of glares at me. Which, which is kind of hard because I'm trying to explain to her I can't I can't have it. I just watched myself like I test afterwards and stuff like that. But she thinks that I should live in eliminate it completely. So I'm under a lot of stress when she's here. Not only with the bipolar, but with the diabetes, too.
Scott Benner 9:01
Yeah. Oh, so she's just she got indoctrinated at a certain time. And you probably only I mean, how long did you live with her after you had diabetes?
Anonymous Speaker 9:11
Well, I was in eighth grade. So three years, five years.
Scott Benner 9:15
And then that's it. So her her understanding of diabetes is 27 years old. And that's it. And she stuck on that. Yes. Yeah, that seems fun for you. And when you when you explain it to her, she doesn't care to hear it. Have you stopped trying to explain it to her?
Anonymous Speaker 9:30
I really want her to listen to 371 your episode that explains it. And I think that would be a less of a blow. Like it's nicer than me saying, Oh, I can't eat it and like starting an argument.
Scott Benner 9:44
I have to tell you, the older I get, the more I believe that people who you are close to need to hear things from somebody besides you. Exactly. It really is difficult for people to accept new or challenging information from someone that's too close to them. It really I it's just you just need to hear it from somebody who you don't have other entanglements with, I guess, you know what I mean? Like, who doesn't look at you like you're a little kid, or right? Or even? I mean, I know, a couple of people who are bipolar. And as supportive as I see their family be like, to their face, like behind their back. I always, it's, it's judged as a you know, it's a mental disorder that is judged by other people. Like, it just really is. It's how do you find that? I mean, I'm sure you have like, some people in your life, we're just like, you're that's that. But are there other people who don't see it that way? You mean, like, do you think? Do you think you're judged harshly by others? For the bipolar? Like, you know what I mean?
Anonymous Speaker 10:58
Yes, yeah, I try and keep it hidden. But then sometimes my, I act impulsively, or I go on, spend a lot of money or do something that kind of, I'm embarrassed on myself. And that's when I'll be like, well, I am bipolar. And this is what's going on and talk about my mania. And just say, this is one of the symptoms my my brain isn't working correctly. I'm sorry, I said something. mean, I didn't mean it harshly. I don't know my tone.
Scott Benner 11:26
Yeah. So you can't I get your so you can't have it. In a moment when it takes over. You can't not explain it to somebody.
Anonymous Speaker 11:35
Yeah, do you? Sometimes it takes me a little bit to apologize, because I don't realize they did it.
Scott Benner 11:40
So yeah, let's um, do you mind digging into that? Like, what's their? What's the, the general flow of how this goes? Like? Does it go in blocks? Like are you like, like manic sometimes? And how long does that last? And then what like, what's the transition? Is it just in a circle? Does it just happen over and over again? How does it work?
Anonymous Speaker 12:03
Um, when I was first diagnosed, I was on my honeymoon. And it's hard to describe, my husband can explain it better than me. But he's told me that I would hide myself in the place that we slept and I would lock the door, and he would freak out. And then I wouldn't sleep when I walk around the boat. And I want to we came back because we were on a cruise boat, we came back into to the emergency room, and they didn't know what was going on. So I think my diabetes is kind of put on the back burner, because of me dealing with a bipolar. And I've been in the hospital twice. And both times I needed to change my medicine drastically, in order to see an inpatient to see how it's gonna affect me before they let me go. Um, but I, I know that we try and stay under the best control and my husband has like this radar. And he's like, Okay, we got to nip this in the bud before you have to go to the hospital again.
Scott Benner 13:07
So there are things he sees behaviorally that indicate medication needs to be fine tuned. Exactly. Okay. So can you stay in front of it that way? I mean, I realize you're waiting for a symptom to change the medication so you're not really in front of it. But that's the goal. You're just it's sort of like changing basil rates for for a woman who's of menstrual age, like you just like you're like, oh, something's happening. More basil here, like, and then you go through the cycle and you're like, take it away. But do you ever take it away? Or is it always just increasing?
Anonymous Speaker 13:41
No, I'm fall as usual, my hardest time of the year. That's when I was first diagnosed. And just because everything happens within the span of four months. Um, so we have taken away over the summer.
Scott Benner 13:57
Oh, so not not completely gone. But
Anonymous Speaker 14:00
no, not completely. We've lessened it.
Scott Benner 14:02
Right. Wow. And he's helping you. I'll tell you what, first of all, good guy. I might have jumped. Oh, yeah. I'll be honest, I've been like, I don't know. I haven't been around that long. I got to go. on a cruise ship. Yeah. Oh, my God. That sucks. Yeah, I
Unknown Speaker 14:21
don't even know another way to say that.
Scott Benner 14:23
You were on your honeymoon on a cruise ship when someone realized you had bipolar disorder. And may I ask what happened that made someone realize was it just the locking in the room thing? Was that it?
Unknown Speaker 14:37
Oh, no.
Unknown Speaker 14:38
There's a story.
Unknown Speaker 14:40
There's what?
Scott Benner 14:41
There's got to be a story like you were in Puerto Vallarta at a stop and what happened? You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing.
Anonymous Speaker 14:48
Well, my mind wasn't really there. Like my mind was racing so much. I remember like waiting in line for one of the buffets and getting pizza or I don't remember what food was. But I, my mind was racing so much that I felt like everybody else was moving really, really slowly. And so I flipped out. And we had landed, or we had docked someplace and my husband was snorkeling or something like that. And I freaked out not knowing where he was, like, had a run in the water. We knew something was going on. But it took a while to get the diagnosis.
Scott Benner 15:26
Do you? Um, there's, there's a little bit if you do some googling, right? bipolar and immune, autoimmune, are a little connected, aren't they? Do you? Do you ever? Have you ever read some of the articles that say that?
Anonymous Speaker 15:43
No, I've always felt like I'm the only one.
Scott Benner 15:45
One of the more recent discoveries in the study of bipolar disorder is that autoimmune disease may play a role and it's in the conditions development. Studies have found that having an autoimmune disease or suffering a severe infection increase the risk of also having bipolar disorder. I mean, you got to be like the third person who's on the show who's like, hey, I've type one diabetes and bipolar disorder. And I'm thinking that I remember, you know, when you meet somebody you don't really know about their extended family, like my wife has extended family that I've never met, like, real extended. And I feel like there's a bipolar person back in her line to somewhere just super interesting. Like I I mean, I don't know, obviously, anyone who listens to the show realizes I have no medical training, but I just I make sure wonder, I mean, it just, it's weird. For certain I don't know that you're the only one Have you never heard Jonathan on here?
Anonymous Speaker 16:43
No, I'm actually new to listening to the podcast. Oh, wait, he was the child right.
Scott Benner 16:50
Now, there's another person, another person you? I'll show you later. But there's a there's a an afterdark, about bipolar? And so how does it? How does it intersect with the diabetes? Because you said it one's got a backburner? And I understand what you mean, you know, there's only so many hours in the day to apply to trying to figure out your medical things, call doctors get appointments, do stuff like that make changes the medication? Does. Does your diabetes take a big hit? Like Where does your a one c set?
Anonymous Speaker 17:25
Um, the last time that I was supposed to go in to get my a one c tested, because I go every three months? It was right around seven. But when I was pregnant, it was in the sixes.
Scott Benner 17:38
Yeah, well see, that's not too bad. But you're saying that sometimes you just you can't think about it. Because like, what, what keeps you from thinking about it? I guess is my question.
Anonymous Speaker 17:49
I guess I'm so focused on trying to be normal. And having both of these conditions makes me not be normal in my mind. So I guess I try and pretend like I'm not diabetic. And I try and watch what I say and watch what I do. And to not make it obvious that I'm bipolar.
Scott Benner 18:15
So you don't want to be in a situation where somebody just real really sees either of those things about you
Anonymous Speaker 18:22
know, right. And usually I talked about being bipolar or diabetic over being bipolar. Because sometimes my blood sugar will drop or sometimes that I, I can't drive because on the Starburst haven't kicked in. And that's when I'm like, Oh, yeah, I'm diabetic.
Scott Benner 18:40
I have. I can't drive right now. Are there any people in your life who know that you have one, but not the other thing?
Unknown Speaker 18:51
Um,
Anonymous Speaker 18:53
you mean like family members? Or just people?
Scott Benner 18:55
I don't know, right? I'm not sure what I mean. Like, I'm wondering if you've like, had to tell somebody about the diabetes, but the other things never come up. So that just stays away. By the way, everyone has medical issues. No one runs around telling everybody about them. It's it's the stuff that's forward facing that might impact somebody else, like you're saying, so you feel like you have to say, you know, my outburst or I'm sorry, I'm dizzy or that kind of thing. That's just I guess, common sense, honestly. But nobody, like I have, you know, I struggle with like low iron. It's not anything like this, but I don't meet you and go Hey, how are you? Sometimes? Not the second thing that comes out of my mouth when I meet somebody and I really understand the idea of wanting to keep it private. Especially when, hmm, but but how much of a struggle is that for you? Like, is that a portion of your day? like trying not to tell people you have these things?
Anonymous Speaker 19:48
Oh, yeah, trying to hide it. Yeah,
Scott Benner 19:50
the best that I can show the hidings a job.
Anonymous Speaker 19:55
I really don't feel like I like to explain it to like I almost want to say okay, bye color. This is what happens by,
Unknown Speaker 20:02
huh?
Scott Benner 20:02
Have you ever seen that? That card that Steve Martin carries? It's a business card, and it said you've had a brush with greatness. And when people ask him for a signature or something like that, he just hands it to them. Maybe you need that.
Unknown Speaker 20:17
That's great.
Scott Benner 20:19
Maybe you need to like, you know, bump into somebody yell at them for no reason. Just pull a card out of your pocket and go, boom, here you go and wander away from them.
Unknown Speaker 20:28
I wonder if.
Scott Benner 20:32
So my question is when you do end up telling people, is it bad?
Anonymous Speaker 20:38
Now most of the time, they're very receptive.
Scott Benner 20:41
So then, you know, the question, I'm gonna ask you Next, right?
Unknown Speaker 20:45
Why don't you
Unknown Speaker 20:46
get why are you bothering hiding it from them?
Anonymous Speaker 20:49
If it's cost, I want to try and be normal, I think.
Scott Benner 20:54
Listen, those two things feel in Congress just so you'd like. Because what we've learned so far is, it doesn't seem to my people don't seem to mind when you tell them but you don't like explaining it. But once they know it's no problem, but hiding it from them is stressful.
Unknown Speaker 21:11
You nailed it.
Scott Benner 21:12
Thank you. And I've googled Steve Martin's card. It's signed by him. So he's not a not a deck. He actually signs it. But it says, this certifies that you have had a personal encounter with me, and that you found me warm, polite, intelligent and funny. Steve Martin.
Unknown Speaker 21:31
There you go.
Unknown Speaker 21:32
Let's get you a business card company. I think we're
Unknown Speaker 21:35
all love that idea.
Scott Benner 21:38
Oh, my God. Apparently, Nathan Fillion does it too. This is to certify that you just met Nathan Fillion. How did you do? Great. He was impressed and now calls you friend. You called him captain. And it was good. It was friendly. Oh, it's got like choices for you to tell people about what people are geniuses. Alright. Can you imagine? How many people bother Steve Martin?
Unknown Speaker 22:03
You know, they
Scott Benner 22:03
mean, like if Steve Martin, I think I would like a little girl yell. Oh, my god, you're Steve Martin. Then he'd be like, Yes, I know. And people tell me every 25 seconds. Thanks so much. Here's a card Leave me alone. Even the cards probably not fun anymore. But okay, so back to you. Seriously, listen, everybody in the world does something that doesn't make sense, right? Because of some sort of, you know, you know, an internal reason. But I don't you just described something. It sounds like you like better when you tell people but you want to be normal, but I don't know what normal is. So
Anonymous Speaker 22:43
I feel like I have to be in the mood. Like I understand. When I had the insulin pump, I whip it out and I do my Bolus and train my banglori or cover it in the movie theater. I said when I first got it, like, that's when you turn on the light is when you're in a movie theater, and you have to cover it with insulin. But if I pull it out, and you're like, Oh, that looks like a pager? Or what is that kind of thing, then sometimes I'd go into detail as much as I wanted to. And other times, I'm like, it's just an outside pancreas. Don't worry about it.
Scott Benner 23:16
So when we sit in a movie theater, if we're right up on people, I will turn to the person next to me and say, Hi, how are you? And then they have a horrified look on their face because they're trying to see a movie and not gonna bother you again, just wanted to let you know my daughter has type one diabetes, I might have to take my phone out to give her insulin, I'll do my best for it not to bother you enjoy the show. And then I turn away from them. And that's that. But I am not encumbered by the need to feel normal, which I'm assuming everyone listening is not laughing about because they know but I don't have like I don't have that I heard somebody talking about recently about people rush through lines, like when you're in, you know, in line getting food and there's people behind you that a lot of people rush to they feel very pressured that there are people behind them. And I thought Huh, I've never really felt that way. Like I mean, I want to do I am one of those people like I sit at a traffic light and when it's my turn I go because I am cognizant that there are people behind me. I am cognizant of other people, but I don't feel rushed by the knowledge that they're there. And but it feels awkward to see you have a much different like, you know, story like you were diagnosed when you were 14. When did you first get a pump?
Anonymous Speaker 24:38
Right before I went to college in 1999. I had good old Kaiser. So I did do all kinds of readings and my agency and I think I had to fast and I think the two things I could have or mustard and celery and get blood sugar readings for that. So it took a while. That's actually the only time
Scott Benner 25:00
What you just said something that most people can't even fathom? That's how long ago you've had diabetes. So you had to prove what did you have to get to show them fasting blood sugars? Yes. Because if they were still high, then you needed a pump.
Anonymous Speaker 25:15
Apparently I needed to be under good control to be enabled. Yeah, it's kind of backwards.
Scott Benner 25:22
It's all just inch. I bet you I have no idea but I bet you it's all just insurance bs that they were just looking for ways to restrict what they had to pay for for some people. Because that, that literally sounds like three people have never seen anyone with diabetes. You forgotten a room. I was like, what should we do to make them get a pump? We can make it a little girl eat celery. That'd be great. Let's do that. My maniacal laughing. So you had to prove to them you needed a pump. You got it right around college. That's a real new thing at that time in the world. So that's definitely something you were trying to hide. I imagined but yet, not real high level back then. Right?
Unknown Speaker 26:03
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 26:05
How are you?
Anonymous Speaker 26:06
Well, it was able to be hidden because at that time, people had pagers.
Scott Benner 26:12
Oh, so you can play it off that way?
Unknown Speaker 26:14
Right. Gotcha.
Unknown Speaker 26:16
Can you just pretend that you're a drug dealer?
Anonymous Speaker 26:21
Well, I heard I actually went to diabetes camp, and one of the lady said that she was giving herself her insulin in the bathroom. And someone came in and saw her and she they thought she was taking illegal drugs.
Scott Benner 26:37
So they called the cops
Anonymous Speaker 26:39
now that I think they just approached her and they're like, what are you doing? And she's like, Oh, I need to do this. It's okay. Please don't turn me in. See.
Scott Benner 26:50
I my friend Mike used to just tell people he was shooting up. And then he would say things like, I can't I can't deal with you guys. Unless I'm high. Like stuff like that. I had to, you know, and he would shoot right in his stomach. Do you remember where you would give it like, you know, I said, the ordinary day, you've never given yourself a needle in your stomach. And she's like, people do that. Oh, yeah. All the time. She goes, Oh, I'm not doing that. I was like, okay, she went to her buddy there. Oh,
Anonymous Speaker 27:20
I have a funny story about that. My, my routine when I was in high school is I would test my blood. And then my mom would leave a needle and then I take my insulin, do my shower, get ready and stuff like that, and come up and have breakfast. And before that she used to give me a shot. And she did it in my butt and got a big old bruise. And after that happened, I was like, okay, you're you. It's my turn. From now on. You lost your excuse me? You lost your privilege. Yeah, you're not doing that again.
Scott Benner 27:52
Isn't that great? She hit a blood vessel and you're like, that's your fault. Aren't we be like you she stills? Like, we don't do it that often. But we do it so infrequently that everyone looks at it sort of like Pulp Fiction, you know, where it's just like, remember how to do this. Let's try here. It's just it's interesting how, how things have changed, but at the same time you hit off the college. any signs of man, can you look back in retrospect and see bipolar coming? Or does it just come like a light switch? How does it start? Was it a slow progression or quick?
Anonymous Speaker 28:34
Honestly, I think the stress of the wedding just finally caught up to me. And then you would think that honeymoon would be like I would be relaxed and not a stress. But I think that leading up to it didn't really cause a bipolar but kind of made it come into fruition.
Scott Benner 28:55
You just got pushed over a line. You hadn't been passed, but was planning a wedding. That's stressful.
Unknown Speaker 29:01
Yes. Is it? Yeah,
Scott Benner 29:02
I don't know. If I got my wife and I decided to get married. And we're married like I think seven days later so I didn't have a lot of Oh my goodness. Yeah. But that's so what is it like a year lead up to a wedding and you're like buying cakes and dresses and is it pressure from outside? What makes it stressful wanting it to be nice or people's expectations?
Anonymous Speaker 29:28
Well, both of those and also financially. Ah,
Scott Benner 29:31
so you're trying to hustle money to pay for it as well? Yes. We got married to park I think we had to pay a fee of $20 to the park for us. For them to let us use it and we had to pay a justice of the peace. I think $100 to show up and do the ceremony. The whole Wow. Yeah, that we went on the cheap. We did buy a dress for Kelly. Very nice.
Anonymous Speaker 29:55
We got married at the top of Vail pass and Um, my father in law helped build some cabins up there. Yeah, for cross country skiers. So we did it off season. And it wasn't for everything that we chose to do.
Scott Benner 30:18
Yeah, I am. I remember, one of my sister in laws was getting married my father and I was like, I'll just give you $20,000 if you don't have a way. And, and I think if you found her today, she'd be like, I should have taken that 20. But I understand it, I understand the idea of it, and I get the pressure. So the pressures building because of the wedding, it just you make it to the thing. So not that like if you said to your husband, like, How long were you guys courting before you were married?
Unknown Speaker 30:51
Um,
Anonymous Speaker 30:53
I had just gone to college in August, and then I met him that January or that February? So I told him, I wouldn't marry him until I graduated. So in May of 2003, I graduated. And then that September, we got married.
Unknown Speaker 31:10
Yes, you did college stress and marriage stress on top of each other? Yes, that's interesting. And I said, courting, which I've never said before in my entire life.
Scott Benner 31:22
I really don't know where that came from. Sorry. I'm all over the place today.
Unknown Speaker 31:28
We might want Okay,
Scott Benner 31:31
we might want to test me. I just there's a lot to wrap your head around. When you're when you don't really understand that a lot. And it just is. It's a it's hard not to feel like a lot of compassion for you when I'm talking. And at the same time, I don't want to in any way in for pity, because I don't feel pity. You don't mean? Like it's it's hard to try to be compassionate without seeming or maybe that's just my hang up? I don't know. But I wondered if the medication for the bipolar affects your blood sugar at all?
Unknown Speaker 32:15
Um,
Anonymous Speaker 32:18
I think it depends on which medication I'm on.
Unknown Speaker 32:22
does it vary?
Anonymous Speaker 32:24
Yeah, it's changed throughout the years, but I really don't think it affects it because I've always thought that stuff with hormones checks it. But all the medicine that I take is anti psychotic or seizure medication and mood stabilizers. So in all honesty, I don't think it affects my blood sugar, but other stuff that affects my blood sugar, but not my meds.
Scott Benner 32:49
do those things have other impacts? Like what are some of the side effects of the meds that you take?
Unknown Speaker 32:56
Well,
Anonymous Speaker 32:59
I recently had a colonoscopy, and they put me on oma protocol. And I have to wake up an hour beforehand, because I also take thyroid medication, and then I have to test my blood and then eat 15 minutes later. So my morning is pretty chaotic, and then I have to take medicine throughout the day.
Scott Benner 33:19
Okay, so it's like scheduling, it definitely throws you off. So I hear what you're saying. So the weight the oma persol What is that for? What do they find in your colon?
Anonymous Speaker 33:28
know if something my stomach, your stomach, like some, some juices or I don't know, I could look at it, but don't
Scott Benner 33:34
pick with stomach juices. That's better for the podcast. Okay, so they found some weird stomach juices put you on a med, but you can't overlay that med with your thyroid medication you left out? Are you hypo or hashimotos?
Anonymous Speaker 33:49
Um, I don't know the difference, but I know that I'm on a pretty high dose. Okay. And they took it out completely. Oh, it's gone.
Scott Benner 33:56
Gotcha. Was there a cancer?
Anonymous Speaker 33:59
They had, they had ultrasound it. I guess that makes sense. And so they checked it and they found some nodules. And then when they checked it a year later, they had gotten bigger and they're like, we don't want to mess with his he's got to come out.
Scott Benner 34:14
Okay. So when they found the nodules the first time did you go on medication?
Unknown Speaker 34:19
Not then. No.
Scott Benner 34:21
What year was this? Where are you living in the country? We need to get you to a to a population center so you can see a doctor. Wait, no. Wait, so wait, what year did you find out about the thyroid?
Anonymous Speaker 34:32
Um, not that long ago. Okay, maybe three or four years. I guess the dates kind of mixed up on
Scott Benner 34:38
that but three or four years ago, they find nodules on your thyroid, but don't give you thyroid medication, which by the way, would have helped with that. And so what did they tell you like your your? You they tested you and said you're in range? Did they tell you that bullshit?
Friends, the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor not only shows you your blood sugar, it shows you what direction it's moving in. If it's moving in a direction, and what speed, it's moving in that direction. I do this almost every ad I will now open up my cellular telephone, go to the Dexcom app and tell you that my daughter's blood sugar is 79. She's in school right now. And I can see the last three hours of her blood sugar. I can actually turn my phone and just run my finger along the graph. Listen to the numbers 9190 490-685-9491 80 780-580-4380 7877 This is me just dragging my finger through the last three hours of Arden's life. Isn't that magical? You can do that on your iPhone or Android phone. And not only can I follow Arden but so could nine other people if that's what we wanted. up to 10 people can follow her blood sugar's and see them in real time, and get alarmed if they go above or below a setting that we decide on. My alarms, for instance, are set at 65 and 120. My wife's alarms are set at 70 and 139. Interesting customizability you get to decide you want your alarm set at 150. That's where you put it. You want to set it at. That's where you put it. And it will tell you hey, Scott, you're dropping below 80 you're going over 150 BB a little beep. What does this mean? I see even the beeping tells you two beeps is higher. Three beeps is lower. You get to know this information is at the core of how we make decisions about Arden's insulin. Does she need more? Does she need less? Should she take in some carbs? Or just a few carbs enough to stop this fall? This information is I don't want to say life changing because people say that all the time, but it is it's life changing information. If you're using insulin, check it out. dexcom.com forward slash juice box. You can learn more for Get started today, right there at that link. That's talking about having your life changed. When Arden was four years old, we decided to get her an insulin pump. And luckily we got her the Omni pod. She's been using it every day since then. Since she was four years old. She's going to be 17 soon 13 years wearing an omni pod every day. You heard those blood sugars back there in the Dexcom add. Where do you think they come from? They come from the ability to change. Basil rates make timely boluses extended boluses through high fat meals. Arden can wear the Omni pod without convergence while she's showering, sleeping, running, playing, working out doing whatever it is she does. Arden has a tubeless insulin pump. It doesn't get caught on doorknobs. It doesn't have to be taken off to bave shower or swim. It's a special device. One that I'm thrilled My daughter has. And you can find out right now if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial the Omni pod dash at Omni pod comm forward slash juice box. There are links in the show notes of your podcast player and at Juicebox Podcast comm to Dexcom on the pod and all of the sponsors, even in fact touched by type one.org. You have to be impressed I did that all in one take off the top of my head and use the word cumference properly.
They tested you and said you're in range.
Anonymous Speaker 39:02
Yeah, I think they did test my blood. But then they also gave me the option of taking out half of it.
Scott Benner 39:08
But they never just tried to give you like Synthroid
Anonymous Speaker 39:12
not until I was sticking out
Scott Benner 39:14
until it was until it was gone. Okay. Alright, so you need to the Synthroid, you take and it needs to be away from food or other medications. So that's what I'm talking about. So you have to get up in the morning. Take the Synthroid, wait 30 minutes, take more and then eat or something like that. So your whole morning's kind of like screwed up like that. Yes. And Okay. And then the, what's the cocktail for the bipolar? Like? Do you mind sharing that?
Anonymous Speaker 39:42
You mean the specific drugs?
Scott Benner 39:43
I mean, if you want to if you don't want to, if you don't have to,
Anonymous Speaker 39:48
um, I take Seroquel. Um, I take Depakote and what's the other one? lamotrigine,
Scott Benner 40:03
I don't know why they can't give you things better names. And
Unknown Speaker 40:07
would be easier to remember.
Unknown Speaker 40:09
Really,
Scott Benner 40:10
why not call it like, I don't know, nevermind, I just I don't I actually understand the naming system through the FDA and why they make it, why they make them do it like this. But it's just, it's just difficult to remember when someone's on a drug their whole life, and they can't say it, that's a problem happens to everybody. So you take these three medications, that they have to be with food, or at certain times a day or anything like that.
Anonymous Speaker 40:34
Um, the circle needs to be spaced out through the day. Um, I take a pretty high dose that night, and then I take the other one in the morning. And then in the middle of the day, I take another one at lunchtime. And it usually makes me sleepy. So I'm probably the best time for me to drive is in the afternoon before dinner. So this is because of the medication. So
Scott Benner 40:58
this is one of these things has a very short half half life in your bodies, you have to keep taking it to keep the efficacy built up. Is that how that works? Yeah. Okay. And if you don't take that, what happens?
Anonymous Speaker 41:12
Um, the mania starts kicking in.
Scott Benner 41:14
Okay. Do you know what mania looks like? Or do you not know, you're like, do you not recognize like, I'm talking to now the person you are right now on using the medications? Do you fully understand what it looks like when you're not? Or do you not have that kind of recollection of it?
Anonymous Speaker 41:32
Um, I'm aware of it. But my impulse control is not there my tone, I could go to the grocery store. And in my mind, saying, I, I need this when it's actually a want. So I'm like, oh, like throwing things in the cart that I don't need. But my mind, I'm like, Oh, I, I need this, I just don't want it. And then so I spend a lot of money. And then I don't have a filter. So certain things that I say, should not be said to a certain person, or they can take offense to it. And that's not what I'm doing. And for some reason, I send out a bunch of cards, to friends, and like people that I know is thank yous and stuff like that. And if I start like, doing five or seven a day, it's kind of a red flag.
What else happens? I can't think of anything else that happens right off the top of my head. Well,
Scott Benner 42:30
greeting cards is, I mean, at least it's not like I kill five or seven cats a day, it's I send five or seven greeting cards. I mean, there's a high side here for certain, but spend a lot of money like, have you ever gotten in a situation where you've had to go and say, Look, this happened? I need to return these things. Like, is it been that bad? Or is that always something you guys can kind of cover on your own?
Anonymous Speaker 42:54
My husband really doesn't like returning anything. So he just kind of holds it over my head. Like,
Unknown Speaker 43:01
is there a mania room full of stuff you don't use?
Anonymous Speaker 43:04
No, it's actually not that bad. Because we usually hate sometimes when I'm at the store, I have to contact him and I'm like, Can I get this? And he'll either say yes or no. But I went to Costco, and which is not a very good place to go when you're manic. But I had bought this huge thing of powdered Parmesan cheese. And I and then I returned it and he needed it. He's like, Well, where is it? I'm like, well, you got so mad at me I returned it.
Scott Benner 43:39
Just imagine you're carrying a 50 pound bag of Parmesan cheese or something. He needs three pinches for something then goes for it. It's not there. And so some stuff, but we had 50 pounds of it now I just need three little benches.
So So anything you ever tried to hurt yourself or anything like that,
Anonymous Speaker 44:00
um, I was on material for a little while. And one of the main symptoms that got me was confusion. And that's when I had suicidal thoughts. with one eye when I was confused again, it's different from psychosis. psychosis is my mind. wouldn't let me go to sleep and it would just keep running. And then like I would walk around in my underwear, I would do like weird stuff. Like I would stare at the ceiling. It was bizarre, so I forgot where I was going with that.
Scott Benner 44:40
You were just telling me about psychosis. But I think we all got lost imagining you're walking around in your underwear and thinking we all thought holy real psychotics because it was walking around in my underwear like two hours ago. psychosis may occur as a result of psycho psychiatric illness. like schizophrenia and other instances that may be caused by health conditions or medications or drug use. So this one medication gave you these, these symptoms, you had to stop taking that. Yes, gotcha. How do you feel? Like, personally, can you separate the illnesses from you? Like, are you sad that this happens to you? Or have you made your peace with it that this is like how your life is? Do you not? Or you're not able to think about it that way?
Anonymous Speaker 45:33
No, I feel like I'm still in denial that I have it. I wish I could get over it and just kind of embrace it.
Scott Benner 45:41
Yeah, I don't I mean, how old are you again? 40. You're halfway there. I mean, I know we all want to think we're gonna live forever. But yeah, I saw my mom trying to get out of a chair the other day. Trust me. If you're still alive. It's not great. You're not in a you're not in a commercial. hanggliding 78 years old? Yeah. You're at home going? I hate the news. But I watch it. So Well, look, I gotta be honest with you. It's gotten me this far. I don't know that that's a terrible thing. And I don't is it denial? Or is it just the idea that you don't want to say it out loud? Because you're afraid of what will happen? Right? Because it's not Yeah,
Anonymous Speaker 46:30
I don't want to be judged.
Scott Benner 46:32
But it's not like you think the bipolar thing will go into another gear, if you just say, I'm bipolar. And I have type one diabetes and all this stuff, socks, but this is what I got to do. You don't think it'll get worse if you like, just give yourself over to it?
Unknown Speaker 46:49
You mean?
Scott Benner 46:51
Like, I guess what I'm asking is, are you worried that you're on a precipice, and by not fully accepting that you have bipolar disorder that you're stopping yourself from? something worse happening? Or he just is to just suck to say out loud?
Unknown Speaker 47:10
It just sucks to say it out loud.
Unknown Speaker 47:11
Okay. All right.
Anonymous Speaker 47:14
That's why it was so scared. Like, that's why I kept emailing you and be like, Okay, I need to prepare for this. I don't know what I'm gonna say. Can you ask me the questions beforehand, so I can be ready with the answer. Well,
Scott Benner 47:27
that's why that's why my next question was going to be why in the hell did you want to do this? Is this you're trying to accept it. thing?
Unknown Speaker 47:35
Yeah. No,
Unknown Speaker 47:36
do you think it's gonna work your help?
Anonymous Speaker 47:39
Well, I can listen to it as many times as I want. You definitely can.
Scott Benner 47:43
Hey, that's a good point. If I just had enough people with enough problems, come on, I could get my downloads up by them just re listening to their basically, free therapy thing that we do here on the podcast.
Unknown Speaker 47:54
That's why I'm feeling it's like,
Scott Benner 47:56
is it hell? I mean, we're 45 minutes in How are you feeling?
Anonymous Speaker 48:01
Like I have more to say. lay it all out.
Scott Benner 48:05
Yeah. Well, then go ahead. What do you want people to know.
Unknown Speaker 48:09
Um,
Anonymous Speaker 48:11
one kind of fun thing is when I went to diabetes camp, they were called juice ferries. And because you're so active, and you had to walk to do everything and walk to the bathroom and walk to eat and stuff like that. They would test you before you went to bed and they would come and they would test your blood and give you juice and graham crackers with peanut butter. And they're called the juice fairy and then they leave you alone.
Unknown Speaker 48:39
So the juice fairy comes and Jacks up your blood sugar and then lets you sleep.
Anonymous Speaker 48:43
Yeah, basically. Well, if your blood sugar was high enough, obviously, they wouldn't give you anything. But
Scott Benner 48:51
I'm just thinking that the next time I have to go into Arden's room, I'm gonna say, hey, the juice fairies here. Never thought that before my life, but now I say it out loud. Yeah, I don't it's that that makes sense. It. The juice fairy is a is a nice way to how old were you when people you weren't like 20 years?
Anonymous Speaker 49:14
No, um, I think it was right after I was diagnosed. I was diagnosed in December. And because I was 14, I was still able to go to diabetes camp. Yeah. So I hadn't been diabetic for very long before I went there. Okay, I guess is what you do.
Scott Benner 49:32
I think if I ran a diabetes camp, it would look much different than other people's diabetes camps. And back in the day, I mean, 20 years ago, I did use very makes a lot of sense, but I was just thinking about that. I was like, what would you do? I get everybody together and we get their bases all straight and get their blood sugar stable, and then we go do a bunch of stuff. And that'd be it.
Anonymous Speaker 49:54
No, this is when everybody was on shots.
Scott Benner 49:56
Yeah, right. Just shooting and Hoping and if you got dizzy ate something
Anonymous Speaker 50:03
that was like a bonding time.
Scott Benner 50:06
I get that, like you're all waiting around to be dizzy. Did it happen to some people more than others? Yeah, were you one of those people? Or were you fairly? Not Not so much. So
Anonymous Speaker 50:21
what cuz I was still trying to figure out what to do. I think they had to test me a lot. Yeah.
Scott Benner 50:27
All right. Okay. Listen, a minute ago, you were like, a split second from your coming out party. And I was like, tell people what you want to know. And you're like, there were juice fairies a diabetes camp. That is not the way I thought you were gonna go? Did you check it out? Or is that the first thing that popped into your head?
Anonymous Speaker 50:44
No, when I was going over this morning, in my head, what I wanted to talk about that was the first thing that I thought was kind of fun,
Scott Benner 50:50
cool. It's definitely fun. But I want you to unburden your soul. Like, I want you to get out of this at the end and be able to walk around and treat your self the way you want to be treated. Because I feels like you want to be one way and you're stopping yourself. Because you don't want people to know. But I mean, you're aware, because I have not hidden it from you. I got a lot of people are going to hear this. So you're good now, like you told people and it's green because as many people here it, probably not one of them will know you. So it's true. Yeah. So you have you get the you get to have the reality of unburdening yourself and telling people without the unpleasant part of your dentists looking at you and going, I didn't know you had diabetes, or you know, something like that. So, I mean, I guess put yourself in that position, somebody is in front of you, and you want them to know, but you don't want them to judge you. What do you want them to know? You said, What do I sorry? You just cut out? No, I'm sorry. What would you want them to know? about you?
Anonymous Speaker 51:58
I think that I'm, it's not my fault. Like, I want them to know that. Because I have bipolar, there's something in my brain that's not working like you would think. And then it wasn't my fault that my pancreas decided to die. Like, I want to be able to express that and explain why I do the things that I do. And it's not my fault, that what I do, yeah. Does that make sense?
Scott Benner 52:26
No, it does. So similar to the idea of, you know, you're afraid if you if you if somebody is afraid if I say I have cancer, someone's gonna think well, what did you do to get it? diabetes? What did you do to get it you? Do you? I hope you understand, and maybe you don't, but my belief is that that reaction from other people is self defense. Like, they don't want it to happen to them, which is an obvious reaction. And the end, because it's nebulous, because there's no reason why you have bipolar, and I don't, or my daughter's thyroid works, not as well as someone else's. There's no reason for that. So the fear when you see it happen to other people is Oh, my gosh, this could just randomly happen to me. I don't want to deal with that feeling. So I have to ascribe a reason why this happen, and then avoid that reason. So you smoke, you have cancer, that's your fault. I don't smoke. I'm never going to get cancer. And then which isn't true, but makes people feel comfortable. Yeah. And, and for you, the most important thing is for people to know, like you didn't make some bad decision that made you bipolar, or, you know, eight, you know, 819 pounds of sugar, like some people just seem to assume that's how diabetes happens. And yeah, and that makes a lot of sense to me. It really does. Because, like, you didn't like smoke some like laced crack or something like that. And like, all of a sudden, you were bipolar. It just happened. Right, right. And even if you did, by the way, I want to say, I've never said this before. If you did smoke crack, and it messed you up, it's still not a good reason to just like, make you feel bad about it later. Like, I mean, it already happened. You don't mean, you didn't hurt anybody but yourself if that's what happened. So I don't know. I definitely understand what you're saying. So what's the fear? What happens to you if they say to you some version of what did you do to yourself to make that happen? If that's what they think, why does that matter to you?
Anonymous Speaker 54:41
Basically, I shut down.
Scott Benner 54:43
Ah, okay. So just the assumption that they think you've done something to cause it kind of pushes you into a different and bad place.
Unknown Speaker 54:54
Yeah. Got it. Okay.
Scott Benner 54:58
So you can't just ignore it. The way I would write, alright. Like, I don't actually care what other people think. I mean, I do in some very specific and important situations, but like in the grand scheme of things, small things that don't matter, your opinion of, you know, my politics, I don't care about you like that kind of thing. Like, you know, if I, my neighbor cuts his lawn in a really specific pattern that makes me think he has a mental illness. And I just sort of go around the perimeter of my house and cut wherever, like, I don't think I've ever cut my lawn the same way twice. I'm just like me, and I got the edge and it means nothing to me. I don't want to wake up And see the lines in the grass. I don't care. I just want the grass to be shorter. But if someone said that to me, like you don't cut your lawn, right? I'd be like, what? Whatever. And then that would be and then I would never think of it again. But that could actually make you go inside and say, I don't cut my lawn right? And you shut down, then how long does? How long does that last for? If you get pushed into that situation?
Anonymous Speaker 56:10
I think it depends on the person.
Scott Benner 56:13
So how much you feel it from them dictates how long you feel badly about it afterwards? So it would mean more coming from your husband or your mother than it would from someone you just met in the store or something like that?
Unknown Speaker 56:28
Yeah. Okay.
Scott Benner 56:31
You alluded earlier that having your mother talk to you about your diabetes was not good for you? How often does is she involved still? How often does she get to say to you, you shouldn't eat that?
Anonymous Speaker 56:47
Only when she comes to visit? Oh, well, we ever since COVID, we've been talking or playing a game called trickster online. So we're able to play cards with with them in Colorado, because we're in South Carolina. And she doesn't really get to say what I eat until she gets here. And then my anxiety is going up because of her visit. And then my blood sugar's way out of whack.
Scott Benner 57:17
And just saying to her, Mom, I need you very I need you not to comment on my food. Why? And I don't want to see any side eye or stinky face or anything like that, when you see me do anything, because it really is bad for me. That wouldn't stop her from doing it.
Anonymous Speaker 57:33
I don't know what happened because I've never tried it.
Scott Benner 57:36
This is while we're playing trickster, we start we start talking about this a little bit. Or maybe you just have to. I mean, I assume the obvious answer is you need to call her on the phone and say, hey, look, there's no way you would ever know this. And I'm certainly don't want you to feel badly about it. Although I imagine you might. But please try not to for long. This is got an impact on me, I really need for this not to happen, you know, very matter of factly. Like, this is what happens. This is how it makes me feel. Can you please not do that? I know you have an understanding of diabetes that's a couple of decades old. And I appreciate everything you did for me back then. But the way people manage is really different now. And so when you tell me not to eat something or judge it, it's really hard for me, I really need you not to do that. Would that not put an end to it? Do you think
Anonymous Speaker 58:32
wide open would open our eyes to how she's been acting and that she's is living in the 1990s rather than in the 2020?
Unknown Speaker 58:46
range? feel bad, but a long time later. Right?
Anonymous Speaker 58:51
Yeah, don't. But that's why I want her to listen to your episode. And then we can talk about it afterwards. And I can like you, you know, I've kind of been feeling like when you come here I'm attacked. And that's not healthy for either one of us.
Scott Benner 59:09
Yeah. Well, you know, normal situation. By the way, it's not healthy for either one of you. But you have an extra layer with the bipolar. By the way, why could it not get a better name than bipolar? Maybe it's
Anonymous Speaker 59:21
exactly what used to be called manic depressive. manic depression.
Unknown Speaker 59:25
That's not it either.
Anonymous Speaker 59:27
No, that's not
Scott Benner 59:28
what's the name of that elephant in that Pixar movie? Maybe they should just pick like a random word. You know, Billy, and then just go you know, Billy, oh gal upset. And then I think it would be nicer anyway. We are not having a contest to rename bipolar disorder here on the podcast. Well, I hope that helps. I hope that um, that letting me basically let me do the heavy lifting part and then you come in and say, Hey, you heard that like, please don't do that anymore. Yeah, well, if she ever Listen to this like, Mom, you know, ease up. It's not that big of a deal. Like just she's doing something you don't understand and, and people don't. She's not using that old what we're using back there regular and mph mph. Yeah. Your daughter's using this fast acting insulin now it works so much differently. You don't have to do things the way you used to. And you can still get really great outcomes. And and you know, reduce variability. Are you going to CGM. Now surely I'd like you to have a CGM. But do you think it would make you nervous or upset?
Anonymous Speaker 1:00:41
No, I did try it probably in the pre stages. And I couldn't figure out how to make it. Oh, it wouldn't beep when I would become an arranger, because I was, I probably should have learned more about it before I put it on. But it would wake me up in the middle of night and he get mad. So I got so frustrated with that I even donated all the supplies back to my endocrinologist. But I I do feel like I've had it for long enough that I can tell when I'm higher low and I just have to test to confirm it.
Scott Benner 1:01:17
Okay, two things. Did we just assign the pronoun heat to bipolar? Or were we talking about your husband, he would get mad
Unknown Speaker 1:01:25
husband, okay.
Scott Benner 1:01:26
It's like maybe we're renaming bipolar right now. Just calling him. And that's not how that's gonna work like you. So you don't stop it from beeping, by learning how to turn the beeping off. You stop it from beeping by learning how to use your insulin. So you don't leave the range. Right? Yeah. But you didn't have the time like so you basically threw it on before you knew how you were going to use it. And then that starts beeping all night long. And I will say this, and I mean this with love. How you feel is not important to what your blood sugar is. If if people could just know what their blood sugar was by how they feel, then that's what everyone would do. And no one would be wearing a CGM. But the truth is, is if you put a CGM on and you can start looking at how different foods impact your blood sugar's you can start making different decisions about when the insulin goes in and stop those spikes and those falls. I know you haven't listened to the podcast that long, but if you ever feel like digging into the pro tip episodes, it was it'll walk you through all that stuff. And CGM work. I mean, I don't know how long ago you tried it the first time? Which one? Did you try it? Was it the Medtronic back then? Or was it the Dexcom? Like, seven plus, which one did you have? Do you remember?
Anonymous Speaker 1:02:44
I think, yeah, cuz I was on a mini med pump.
Scott Benner 1:02:47
So you had the Medtronic one. It is widely accepted that that Soc. So so now that Now Dexcom has something called the G six, or the g7 should be out pretty soon. There's another company called libri. That does like a flash CGM where you like hold your phone up to the thing and it gives you your blood sugar so you can see it more frequently. There's a lot of different ways to do this, where you could really kind of like manage your stability. And not I would tell you that I think that most most days, my daughter's blood sugar does not go over 140 even with food. And a major mess up would be 180.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:36
Wow. I used to have to calibrate it.
Scott Benner 1:03:39
Not anymore.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:41
Oh, wow.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:41
I mean, that was huge.
Scott Benner 1:03:42
Yeah, the caliber it used to be had to calibrate like every number of hours or something like that. g six does not require calibration. I have found sometimes at the end of a sensor, it you know, it starts to get a little wonky, then it might need a little help to get you to the last day, but it's fascinating. I'm looking at her last 24 hours now. And actually to go to our last 12 hours. Arden's blood sugar has been between 112 and 71 for the last 12 hours. And over, over 24 hours, there's Chinese food in there.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:22
Oh, wow.
Scott Benner 1:04:23
On a pump after a pump change, so her pump ran out of insulin, right. And we changed it and ate Chinese food in the same 20 minutes. 169 was our highest blood sugar. Wow, it only lasted for about 30 minutes before we got back to 118. So I think you can do that. I think anybody can do that. be perfectly honest with you. And I do wonder how much better you'd feel. If you cut some like spy And variability out of your life. Like maybe maybe you could maybe you could take some of the, you know, the thinking you have to do around diabetes and lessen it over time. Like I'm not saying you would learn in a day. But if you gave yourself time to absorb the ideas, listen through the episodes, got a CGM, I'd say six months later, you'd be in a better place. And you wouldn't have to rush yourself in that. Do you have the the my real question is do you have the ability to do something like that without letting it overwhelm you? Or do you? Can you do that?
Anonymous Speaker 1:05:37
If I take small steps?
Unknown Speaker 1:05:39
Yeah, you should.
Scott Benner 1:05:42
I mean, you should pick something. Tell your mom. Get a CGM. Do one of those things. Seriously, right outside your house right now. yell out loud. I have diabetes and bipolar disorder. Okay. By the way,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:58
if anybody's listening, well, that's
Scott Benner 1:05:59
perfect. Then you get the freedom of feeling like you did it. No one knows. So you said something earlier that I just have to ask about you said you. You were pregnant. Like how many children? do you have?
Anonymous Speaker 1:06:11
Just one, one of them?
Scott Benner 1:06:12
How weird is it to make a decision to have a baby when you have bipolar?
Anonymous Speaker 1:06:18
Well, when I was pregnant, it was under pretty good control.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:21
Okay.
Anonymous Speaker 1:06:23
I don't even remember it. She's 12. So it's been a little while. I was vegetarian at the time working in on the pump. So I would have to go to see the endocrinologist every week, every other week. And then the times in between those I went to get ultrasounds to make sure that she was okay. And diabetics typically have bigger babies. So she was nine pounds, nine ounces. And she was one day shorter being three weeks early.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:52
So
Anonymous Speaker 1:06:55
that's my pregnancy in a nutshell. Can
Scott Benner 1:06:57
you take the meds for the bipolar while you're pregnant? See, that's
Anonymous Speaker 1:07:00
what I was wondering. I think I had to lessen or I didn't have to have any at all.
Scott Benner 1:07:06
You had to for the baby. Yes, gotcha. But it's so longer you don't really remember the whole thing like,
Anonymous Speaker 1:07:14
this is not that long.
Scott Benner 1:07:15
Are you kidding me? What would you give to me? 12 years younger? I mean, I don't think I'd murder a stranger. But I think there are some things I would do to be 12 years younger, like, I think you can pretty much get me to probably like commit a small crime. I think 12 years is a lot I would take it. But there's no fear about like, even just like, did you think about what if I have a baby that ends up having type one diabetes? Was that a concern? Yes. Okay.
Anonymous Speaker 1:07:47
She's actually had the antibodies test and she passed it. So it it supposed to predict whether she has antibodies in the next five years to develop type one.
Scott Benner 1:07:59
Does she have What does she have any of the anybody's if there's like five they test for?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:04
Nope. Oh, that's lovely. She's good to go.
Scott Benner 1:08:07
Excellent. And do you worry about the bipolar thing? Like do you owe yourself like, try not to stress her and things like that?
Anonymous Speaker 1:08:16
Right. And try not to call attention to it. Anything if I start seeing symptoms in her I don't want to make her even more self conscious. Yeah, right. She's, she's in middle school and wants to fit in. Yeah.
Scott Benner 1:08:30
And aren't there certain ages? That bipolar rears more than others? preteen teen like 1314 and then college age, right? Aren't those the two? I think I think it seems to come it's more specific ages. But I don't know if you've ever heard that or not?
Anonymous Speaker 1:08:50
No, I have.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:51
You have?
Scott Benner 1:08:55
Yeah, I mean, that would I just I think in general. I feel like that all the time. Like with the kids. I'm like, oh, if you can just get them past this age right here where this stuff usually happens. And then this you don't I mean, like you always just sort of feel like, I mean, while it's nothing you can you really can't control anything, right? Like what are you going to do just not be stressed out your entire life? Yeah, doesn't seem reasonable. The average age of onset is about 25. But it can occur in the teens were more uncommonly in childhood. Okay. So, you talked a lot about mania, but do you get depressed?
Unknown Speaker 1:09:33
No. You
Scott Benner 1:09:35
get more on the manic side but you don't ever get depressed. That's interesting. So is that definitely bipolar.
Anonymous Speaker 1:09:44
I don't even know if it's should be considered bipolar because bipolar obviously with the by it's the depression and the the mania or the anxiety. And you could also be rapid cycling. So you could have both but No, not really.
Scott Benner 1:10:01
Alright, I'm googling mania without depression. Okay, I'm gonna second.
Anonymous Speaker 1:10:06
I'm curious to know what it is to.
Scott Benner 1:10:08
You shouldn't go to all this stuff but I will Don't worry about there are lows minutes depressed. Wait, what's bipolar two? bipolar two involves a major depressive episode. Well, it's not you mean he is.
Anonymous Speaker 1:10:29
Bipolar two usually doesn't have psychosis. But
Scott Benner 1:10:32
do you think that's from the medication?
Anonymous Speaker 1:10:37
For type one,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:39
or type two? No. Do
Scott Benner 1:10:40
you think the psychosis came from that medication? Or do you have that with or without the medication?
Anonymous Speaker 1:10:45
When I was first diagnosed it, I had no medication. Right.
Scott Benner 1:10:49
Oh, okay. And that was what was happening. Yeah. So you there's so many different like, so self centered concerns and attitudes inflated self esteem, grandiose ideas. Do you have any of that?
Anonymous Speaker 1:11:03
grandiose ideas? Yes. Okay. Like you feel like you can take on the world and you, I can do all these projects in the house. And I'm like, I'm going to clean my closet and give everything away. And I'm going to clean every room in this house. So it's like speaking spans, so people can come over and visit and usually I don't finish the projects. Like in my mind, I'm like, Oh, yeah, it's gonna happen. But then I get distracted. You're very swell.
Scott Benner 1:11:29
You're so sweet. Like you thought of grandiose ideas is cleaning the house not like I think I can fly like nothing like heightened levels of energy, decreased need for sleep. Increased physical activity, feeling jumpy. any of that. Yeah, all the above. Okay. Rapid abstract speech. Excessive talkativeness. talkativeness. Frequent interruptions.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:50
Yes.
Scott Benner 1:11:52
You're not doing that today.
Anonymous Speaker 1:11:54
But I am random today.
Scott Benner 1:11:56
No, I am, too. It's not very helpful. Plus, I didn't like whoa, hold on. We'll talk about that in a second. racing thoughts, abrupt changes of mind frequent shifts in topic?
Anonymous Speaker 1:12:06
Yes. randomness. When it first starts happening. And my husband tells me afterwards, we'll be at dinner. And sometimes I make like they'll be talking about spaghetti and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, what about meatloaf and it completely Besides its food? It just completely blindsides everybody.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:26
You keyword it,
Anonymous Speaker 1:12:27
I didn't see that bridge
Scott Benner 1:12:29
you keyword jumpers that even more random than that, like, I know.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:33
It's topics.
Scott Benner 1:12:35
Like I know somebody like you could be talking about the fall of the Roman Empire. And and at some point in that conversation, like someone could just say, it was it was there were blue skies that day, and they're like, we should go on vacation. Like Like, right, like that. Okay.
Anonymous Speaker 1:12:51
Right. But in my mind, it makes sense.
Scott Benner 1:12:54
Yeah, well, why not your blue skies. Hyper focus on non essential tasks excessive and idealistic planning for future conduct? restlessness, motor agitation, like, I guess your limbs. Not so much. Not so much impulsive decision making poor judgment, reckless behavior, what's the most expensive thing you've ever bought? That you shouldn't have bought.
Anonymous Speaker 1:13:21
Um, I went to my eye doctor and had gotten my eyes dilated. And I told my husband that I was going to go to Costco and get like those really cheap glasses, like reading glasses, or universe caption but get the frames that are really cheap. And I went to the I looked in the Yellow Pages and found an ophthalmologist and went to see them. But $600 frames are with my glasses. He was not happy.
Scott Benner 1:13:52
You really are delightful. Like your biggest like, even with bipolar disorder. Your biggest spending spree was a $600 pair of glasses. Yeah, is that you didn't buy a car or person like you didn't like nothing crazy, right? You didn't like you didn't get involved in like human trafficking. Like you just just bought a pair of glasses. See your I think it's possible. This isn't as bad as you think it is. No, but seriously, it's it's very, I think, I think quite obviously the medications working like if you didn't have this medication, you'd you'd be out like yacht shopping or something like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So well, that's good. That's really great. Your husband's not independently wealthy or anything like that.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:39
No, no.
Scott Benner 1:14:42
worries. doesn't tell you. A giant pile of money somewhere. He's like, Oh, we can't tell.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:50
So take it go.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:52
Oh my god show by so many parents.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:57
are like by the glasses by the sunglasses.
Scott Benner 1:15:00
I thought for sure you're gonna tell me like you got laser eye surgery or something like that. Like you're like I, you know, decided screw this I'm getting my lenses reshaped. They're doing that now. Did you know that there? It's sort of some version of like the cataract procedure, but it's for nearsightedness, so you don't need reading glasses anymore?
Unknown Speaker 1:15:19
Wow.
Scott Benner 1:15:20
I'll tell you, I might do that. I hate that. As I get older my visions. Like that's one of the things that bothers me more than anything else. It's just like me complaining to you.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:32
I can't read close up. Here's like my pancreas. Working.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:41
Sorry.
Scott Benner 1:15:45
Oh, my gosh, you are really lovely, by the way. Oh, thanks. Yeah. What was the concern about not knowing what we were going to talk about? While we were talking? How did that make you feel?
Anonymous Speaker 1:15:58
anxious. Well, excited and nervous. Also,
Scott Benner 1:16:02
did it end up mattering? where an hour and 15 minutes into this didn't matter? Oh,
Anonymous Speaker 1:16:07
my goodness. Seriously?
Scott Benner 1:16:09
Yeah. Did it end up mattering to you? No, no. Is that a lesson that you can do? Is that a lesson you can take with you? Or will it not work that way?
Anonymous Speaker 1:16:19
No, it's definitely a lesson.
Scott Benner 1:16:21
Yeah. I there's a handful of people and I don't remember them by name anymore. But it's fascinating like, because I'm very loose about how I booked the show. Like, there's, there's certain little protocols you kind of jumped through. And then once you've done that, you have to pick a time to record that significantly in the future. Now, you didn't have to do that. Because I've learned that people who have depression, or anxiety or mania, that kind of stuff, it's not good to put something too far off in the future for them. Like for the same reason, I'll put your episode up sooner, I will not make you wait six months for this to come out. Because it'll kill you. Like I've learned that. It's so I know out of kindness to you, this needs to go up pretty soon, right? You need a little time to think about it. And then it needs to appear. But for most people, most people have to like there are it's February right now. Actually, my son's birthday today. And oh, well, happy birthday to him, I will definitely tell them that. And I can tell you that I can scroll forward. There is someone booked to record this show as far out as the latest one I have right now is a woman named Leanne who's recording on November 2 2021. And there are so many recordings between now and that date, like well set up. And then so you have to want to be on the show because you have to book something out in the future then. And then I do very little to make sure that you're here. There's like I think two automated emails you get right, like one the day before and something. And then, but do you know that I've never turned this thing on and the person's not been there. They're always here. And that's how I make sure that I get people who really want to be on the podcast. Right. But that process did not work for you at all, and has not worked for a handful of people in the past. And I've learned to like accommodate that. But the problem is, I don't know what I'm going to talk to you about. And so I can't give you questions ahead of time. That makes me feel terrible. But I felt like you handled it. Okay. But I probably had to reassure you four to four times you think
Unknown Speaker 1:18:37
at least
Scott Benner 1:18:38
Yeah, we were married there for a minute. I was like, hold on let me help. But, but you never got to to work. Like you were worried. But it seemed like every time I I explained it to you were okay again. Was I reading that writer? Were you not okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:57
No, you were reading it right. I just need to be reassured.
Scott Benner 1:19:00
That's what I thought. Yeah, like, it's gonna be fine. Don't worry, it's gonna be great. You're gonna be great. I'm not gonna ask anything you don't know the answer to. And you even before we started, excuse me, you said like if I asked, like, if you ask something that I don't want to answer, what should I say that I come close to asking you something you didn't want to answer. Can you hold on a second? I apologize. What's a question? I don't know if this is the right thing to ask or not. But what question Could I have asked you that you would have said no, I'm not going to answer that.
Um, it does one come to mind without even telling me.
Anonymous Speaker 1:19:51
Um, maybe the fact that I've been hospitalized because it's such a stigma that in Till now, I don't like to talk about it.
Scott Benner 1:20:03
Interesting because the craziest thing I thought of asking you that I didn't ask you was Has this ever led to any weird sexual encounters that you regret? that literally is one of the questions I had.
Anonymous Speaker 1:20:16
That was one of the symptoms of bipolar Taiwan, right?
Scott Benner 1:20:19
I don't know. I'm just I just been like, since you emailed me months ago. I'm like, I wonder if they just run around banging people before they know about the medication and stuff. Does that but I don't want to ask like that. Because well, seems rude. But that's that's one. You don't have to answer by the way, but like, that's one of unless you want to
Anonymous Speaker 1:20:38
know, I can answer. It's not that's not the case.
Scott Benner 1:20:41
Didn't happen for you like that. No. Does it happen to some people?
Unknown Speaker 1:20:45
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Scott Benner 1:20:47
Everything's just bang, bang time. Right, just based and that's the impulsiveness. And I would imagine there's impulsiveness involved feels like there's probably that whole like intensity and love. And like all that stuff probably gets mishmash together.
Anonymous Speaker 1:21:04
That's no conscience.
Scott Benner 1:21:05
Yeah. So it's just you don't have to worry that you don't know the person or anything like that. But that hasn't happened to you. does it impact your personal sex life?
Unknown Speaker 1:21:18
Stop
Scott Benner 1:21:18
jealousy. We found one I knew I could be if I tried hard enough. So yeah, you don't I that's, that's, that's all I was saying earlier. Like, just say, Don't ask me that. So now, how do you like knowing you're not going to have to answer that question? Does it still make you uncomfortable that it was asked? Yes. Gotcha. Did I ruin something? Like, Did I ruin your day? By asking that or? No?
Unknown Speaker 1:21:44
I'll get over it.
Scott Benner 1:21:46
But it sticks with you for a second. Gotcha. Does it like? Is it like being excited or scared? Does it feel like somebody walked up behind you and said, boo? Or is it deeper than that?
Unknown Speaker 1:21:57
Think it's deeper? Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:21:59
that's really interesting. I appreciate you sharing this, because there's no way for me or other people to know about any of that. And the only way is going to be if people like you are willing to tell stories and answer questions and tell other people how they feel. Because there's no way for me to like I've had people ask me questions that I didn't want to answer. And, you know, eight seconds later, that experience is over for me. It's really something I'm sorry, by the way that this happened to you because it is really random. And you obviously didn't do anything to cause any of this. just bad luck, right? Is that how you want to think of it? What guide I'm sorry to mean to stop you.
Anonymous Speaker 1:22:44
I don't remember as in say, maybe that's a symptom of my medication.
Scott Benner 1:22:52
Seriously, it's just the thing that happens when you get to 40. I had a little glitch here. And then we had to stop for a second. But we were just really kind of up on it. And I wanted to, I wanted to thank you for doing this and see if there's anything left that we didn't talk about that you wanted to talk about.
Anonymous Speaker 1:23:11
When I was reviewing in my mind what I think I wanted to talk about, um, you had mentioned that asked me if I become depressed? And I said no. And it's usually because the little things in my life. Like I love wearing fun earrings, and I love wearing fun socks. And like my socks right now have little mice and cheese on them. So I think that's kind of puts my mind in perspective to not be depressed.
Scott Benner 1:23:40
So you have like, just little like things around you that that help you stay kind of focused on happy stuff. Is that fair?
Anonymous Speaker 1:23:48
Yeah. Yeah, pictures and good movies. And
Scott Benner 1:23:52
that's excellent. I that so that that's a part of your process for for living? Well. That's excellent. That and how did you figure that out?
Anonymous Speaker 1:24:06
Like, well, I was. I don't know about the Sox. I feel like that's always happened. But after I got my ears pierced at 10 it was just fun exchanging them and being like, okay, it's Halloween. So I'm going to put a jack o' lantern on my ears and it's gonna be Fourth of July. So I'm gonna put on red, white and blue and stuff like that.
Scott Benner 1:24:27
Just a happy memory from when you were a little.
Anonymous Speaker 1:24:30
Well, that's my golden birthday. Because I was born on the 10th of the month.
Scott Benner 1:24:35
Your golden birthday. I don't know what that means. Tell me what that means.
Anonymous Speaker 1:24:39
Well, whatever day you were born, like the number day, it's your golden birthday when you turn that age.
Scott Benner 1:24:45
Oh, so if I'm born in the 10th when I turned 10 years old. Yes. I think I've never heard that before my life.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:52
Did I make it up?
Scott Benner 1:24:53
I don't know if he made it up. But I totally missed my golden birthday when I was 12. I wish someone would have said something At least had to have been worth an extra gift. And now I got nothing out of it 24 maybe I can, I already missed my 48th I'm gonna have to wait forever for the next time for it to come around. Alright, I got this I got screwed. I I never know why people in situations similar to yours want to do this. But I'm always very grateful that they do. I think that for you this hour and a half will be one thing. And I think for people listening, it'll be something completely different. And so I wanted to share with you something that a listener shared with me recently, they said that they've learned so much about the world listening to the podcast beyond type one diabetes, because so many different people come on and tell stories that aren't, you know, specifically connected to type one all the time. And, and they thought they said that, you know, it's just, they never thought they would learn something about, you know, I, you know, I forget what the example was back then. But they learned something completely disconnected from diabetes from the show. And I think that you sharing this will help somebody else understand how you feel, and maybe that'll maybe that'll move people's opinions in a certain direction. So that one day someone in your position won't have to worry that, you know, a person will believe that they broke themselves or, you know, did something on purpose or, you know, by being just not careful and led to something like diabetes are order bipolar. So, I think you did that I think you definitely explained to so your, your you spoke to me for the last hour and a half. And I have to tell you, and I I don't know if you would believe this, but if you didn't tell me you had bipolar disorder, we could have just talked about diabetes, and I would have known. Well, that makes me feel good. I'm just gonna say, Are you aware of that? Or do you think that the minute you open your mouth, people are looking at you going there's something wrong?
Unknown Speaker 1:27:05
Um,
Anonymous Speaker 1:27:10
I don't know how to answer that. That's okay. Because it might be both.
Scott Benner 1:27:15
Well, okay, that's fair. But from my perspective, it's not. And I talked to a lot of people, a lot of people. So you don't, you don't make me think like, Oh, I wonder what else is going on here? You know what I mean? Like, it just doesn't, it doesn't seem like you're a person who's got some deep, dark secrets that they're hiding. You seem very real and honest. And then, yeah, you're lovely. You just seem nice. Cheers. Thank you. You're welcome. Plus, you said he threw you threw me off in the beginning, because you said Barbara Davis. But then you said bless their heart in like the same five seconds. How'd she get from the south to Colorado? And then I didn't want to get I didn't want to get sidetracked. So I didn't ask you. But But no, you honestly, if you think that people are looking at you thinking something's out of your out of line? I mean, I can't see you. But from talking to you, I have no, like, if you're wearing like a tinfoil hat, then maybe. Maybe you're not are you?
Unknown Speaker 1:28:20
No. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:24
I think you're okay.
Scott Benner 1:28:28
Can I ask you one last question before we stop? Yes, sir. Do you have any idea of how it feels for your daughter? To have a parent who has bipolar? Like, what's her? What's Is there a change to her life because of that or not particularly?
Anonymous Speaker 1:28:45
She definitely is her personality being an only child that she likes to be bossy. And when I would go through that confusion state, she would always say that she flips being a child to being an adult and to take care of me. So that's her, and she's very proud of it. She'll tell anybody. She's like, I gotta take care of my mom. She needs my help right now.
Scott Benner 1:29:12
Probably like being a lion tamer in those moments. Sharon a whip, right? She's like, I'm trying to keep her from buying glasses and a big bag of Parmesan cheese.
Anonymous Speaker 1:29:25
Well, she's just as bad as me when we go to the store.
Scott Benner 1:29:29
Well, listen, everybody loves to go shopping. I don't know. I think that there'd be a great game show or a reality show where we just take you off your medicine from it and give you $1,000 and see what happens.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:40
Oh, my.
Scott Benner 1:29:42
I feel like he would just buy bulk food. Oh my god at least promised me that the next time you lose it and go do something like that you pie something fun. Get yourself some air pods or something? I don't know. Oh my god. Alright, let's Let me say goodbye. And thank you very much for doing this.
Well, I want to thank you very much for being on the podcast today and opening up about her life with Type One Diabetes, or thyroid issues. And her bipolar disorder. Not only did we hear a real vibrant, lovely person, we have a better understanding now of bipolar. We heard it from a person who has a wonderful sense of humor, and a great sense of purpose. coming on the show to share these things cannot be easy. I really appreciate it when people do it. Thank you. Thank you very much. I won't say your name. Because I don't wanna have to bleep myself again. But I really appreciate you doing the show. You know what else I appreciate it, appreciate Dexcom on the pod and touched by type one. In fact, thank you to all the sponsors of the podcast for supporting this kind of content. Find out more about the Dexcom g6 continuous glucose monitor dexcom.com/juicebox. See if you're eligible for that free 30 day trial the Omni pod dash tubeless insulin pump at Omnipod.com/juicebox and of course, the greatest things in the world seem to happen at touched by type one.org. There are links in the show notes of your podcast player links at JuiceboxPodcast.com where you can just type those addresses into any internet browser. I'd also like to thank you for listening today for supporting and sharing the show and for leaving those amazing reviews. Wherever you listen. If you have a story that you think would be great on the Juicebox Podcast, either in these after dark series or otherwise, send me an email. I currently have some space available in the last third of 2021 for some recordings, maybe it'll be you.
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#470 Diabetes Pro Tip: Weight Loss
Understanding how insulin works is the first step
Scott and Jenny Smith, CDE share insights on type 1 diabetes care
You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Amazon Alexa - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio - Radio Public or their favorite podcast app.
+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.
Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to Episode 470 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today, we're adding to the diabetes pro tip series with an episode that has been asked for by listeners forever. And for that reason in many others, I'm very excited to give it to you today.
The diabetes pro tip series from the Juicebox Podcast began almost two years ago now, when I decided to take the tools that were being spoken about in the podcast, and condense each one into its own episode. That was my original thought anyway, the pro tip series has become so popular that it's just you know, it's like watching a baby grow up and you just kind of go like oh my God, look what they're doing it. It's become more than I expected, and it continues to grow. And today is another another link in that chain, diabetes protip weight loss with Type One Diabetes. Please remember why you're listening that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. We're becoming bold with insulin. In just a second, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Jenny, a little bit about the sponsors and where you can find those other diabetes pro tip episodes. Then we're gonna jump right in
this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, and you may be eligible for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash right now. And you can find out if that so at Omni pod.com Ford slash juice box Get started today with the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor@dexcom.com Ford slash juice box. And if you're looking for those diabetes pro tip episodes, you'd like to start from the beginning, they started Episode 210 with an episode called diabetes pro tip newly diagnosed or starting over, he does a series it's made to be listened to in order. And it's of course available to you as a subscriber to the podcast. All you have to do is go back in that podcast player to Episode 210. And there it is. If you're having trouble finding the other episodes, you can look at Juicebox Podcast comm there's a tab at the top that says diabetes pro tip. If you don't want to go to all that trouble, go to diabetes pro tip.com, where you will find the pro tip episodes and the defining diabetes episodes, which I also am very fond of. In just a moment, Jenny and I are going to get started. But first I want you to know that Jenny Smith has been living with Type One Diabetes since she was a child. She holds a bachelor's degree in human nutrition and biology from the University of Wisconsin. She is a registered and licensed dietitian and certified diabetes educator and a certified trainer and most makes and models of insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors. Jenny happens to be the bomb diggity. I love her. And in a couple of weeks, her 33rd diversity is coming up. So if you're in the private Facebook group for the podcast, please take a minute to go to the thread celebrating Jenny and leave her a little message. And I'll be passing those messages on to her on her diversity. Last thing I want to thank the listeners who sent in questions for this episode specifically, we get them about two thirds of the way into the episode. But first, Jenny and I are going to talk about ways to lose weight when you have type one diabetes. Every time I think there's nothing more to do for the protests, then somebody asks something and I think No, no, that that would work there too.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:01
Is the variables in life that I think will always bring in something to discuss in terms of what it could be in, in diabetes? Like management? Yeah,
Scott Benner 4:13
no, I'm really happy. I'm really happy to hear from people because I think that others perspectives can make me go Oh, yeah, wow. Just because that hasn't happened here. Doesn't mean that's not happening somewhere. And then if it gives you no good focus for what to do. So this is it. We're gonna talk about trying to lose weight, you have type one.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:32
As I mentioned, I think I texted back to you. I was like, this is a big topic. It's not just like five minutes of just go out and start running. I mean, it's it's kind of like a rabbit hole, honestly. I mean, there are many different like, little avenues to kind of talk about and you had a lot of really good questions that came in, or like comments about Gosh, I don't understand this or why isn't this quite right or whatever. So
Scott Benner 5:00
Yes, we actually knew three topics. So I'm gonna have very little to say here probably. And I apologize for that. I guess this is the time, the time we pretend like I just came on your zoom. And I'm like, hey, how do I help? And then you just talk. But what what's the I mean, where do you think we should start? Because to me, I think we should start at the idea that people correlate taking insulin with gaining weight. And then they don't think about calories and get that right. Go. Hi, Jenny. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 5:34
you help me please? Yes, well, maybe.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:39
I know, it's a good place to start in terms of like, one thing that everybody with diabetes specifically thinks about is that it's insulin. And I think a good place to even go with Why does that start is because it's often something that a practitioner will tell people, you know, using insulin, you may be likely to gain weight. I think that was one of one or a couple of like, the comments that came back about this topic, were specific to you know why I've been told that I'm going to gain weight or why, you know, why is this going to happen? or Why did I lose weight, and now I'm gaining all of this weight back like after diagnosis, right. So insulin itself, whether your body makes it or you take it with an injection or with a pump, it's a storage hormone, that's its job, it's supposed to move a certain quantity of carbs, sugar really out of your bloodstream and into places to either be used or stored, right. So in terms of management, insulin can make you gain weight. In terms of like initial diagnosis, a lot of people with type one specific have lost weight. Prior to diagnosis, maybe it was very rapid. Or maybe it was like a lingering loss that people were like, well, I could just keep eating the whole cake. And Gosh, I don't gain any weight, and I'm actually losing weight. And then they're like, wait, this is wrong, this is bad, that shouldn't be happening. So they go to the doctor, right, they get a diagnosis of diabetes, they've lost weight. And in terms of that loss, it's often relative, it's usually a relative to the fact that their blood sugars have been so high, that their body isn't storing those calories, right. So you're essentially paying them out, thus, decay, and all of those things that can come about, you know, around diagnosis time, but because you're losing all those calories, and your body's not packing them in, once you have back the piece of the puzzle that was supposed to help you use that food that you were taking in, your body's gonna start storing it.
Scott Benner 7:43
And so and so. And that is the one confusion you see from newly diagnosed people, like I don't understand, I lost all this weight, and they don't understand the function of it. So explaining the function of it, I think is great. I think boiling it down into one simple idea is that you were dying. And yeah, and your body is using itself up and not storing at the same time trying to stay alive. And then all of a sudden, everything's all right. Now, the more weight at Listen, if I'm if I'm talking about a school, here, you're stopped me. But if you've lost a lot of weight, before you get to this skinny, emaciated, those are my ribs, you probably had weight to lose to begin with, right? Because it was there to lose,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:22
likely and especially more as the adults who are diagnosed Yes. If you had weight to lose for whatever reason, you may have just thought, like I said, Oh, good, I'm actually able to take weight off. Now. I don't know why I'm still doing the same three mile walk every day. And now it seems to be working better. Great. But yeah, once you get to that, like, I shouldn't be able to see my lower ribs or Gosh, my face looks really sunken in when I look at old pictures. That's not what you want.
Scott Benner 8:52
And I think that, again, I this probably sounds I don't want it to sound like distasteful, but if you had weight to lose, you were probably it's likely that you were taking in calories that helps you stay at that weight. Meaning that when you start taking the insulin back in, there are calories there to be packed away to facilitate the weight gain again,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:14
and that's in any case, whether you could have lost weight, you know, and successfully hopefully helpful, you know, left it off. But the goal was starting insulin is in general to maintain a healthy weight then right to get Yes, you will come back from the weight loss, but you should also with the proper insulin dosing, you should be able to get back to a stable healthy weight. You know, if you lost 40 pounds when you were diagnosed and Hey 20 of that you could have definitely lost and the other 20 you really didn't need to great, we should gain back maybe 15 to 20 pounds and then we don't need the other
Scott Benner 9:56
what is the functionality of the proper insulin dosing It makes you gain too much or not enough
Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:03
in terms of insulin dosing, that's correct. The amount of food you put in to work with it, of course, is a piece of the puzzle there. But if your insulin is being balanced along with your use of the energy that it's working with, then you should be able to gain energy back to your body that gets stored, that keeps you at a healthy weight, and you shouldn't then continue to gain if the dosing is correct. And it's so it kind of goes back to, on a baseline initially, make sure your insulin doses are right for you. And a lot of people wonder, you know, they, I just leave it to my doctor. Yeah, it tells me how much more or less to take.
Scott Benner 10:43
And does that mean that if you're not using enough insulin that your blood sugars are left higher, so you're still having some of the action that you noticed before you were diagnosed? Right? Yes, you're a little You're too high, and your body's not storing the, the calories correctly, the glucose collect correctly, and so you're not gaining as much weight. So you could have unhealthy blood sugars, but feel like your weights good. And then you kind of come to that point, you're like, Oh, I'm good. And that really is the beginning idea of diabetes aimia to write, manipulating the insulin to keep your weight down, okay, so that's going the other way, if you're too low all the time, you'd have trouble putting on weight.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:26
If you're too low all the time. One, you've that's actually kind of an, it's an opposite of what you would think really, if you're low all the time. And that's a big reason, then when we start working with somebody, we analyze insulin to begin with, and the first thing we look for, even if there are highs, high highs, we first look for lows, because if weight management is another piece that they're really concerned about, then all of those lows that you're treating, you are feeding insulin, and you're feeding insulin, which ends up packing away the excess that you're taking in, and you maintain a weight that you don't want, or you keep gaining weight that you don't want.
Scott Benner 12:11
So this, this puts you in the position of having to look at carbohydrates as medicine, and being scared because you're low taking away more than you need. And then suddenly, you're back back up again. And maybe you've got enough insulin in there to handle the carbs for your blood sugar. But you've taken in way more calories than your breakfast once got it.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:31
Yeah. Yep. So that's, that's that insulin is, it's kind of the key place to start really. And you know, then a lot of people ask, Well, how much insulin? Should I really be on? How does this enough for me? Is that enough? For me? I know, we just talked about that kind of in depth in another episode, but really, you know, figuring out about how much insulin you need based on a wheat to begin with. That's kind of a starting place that you could go to, how much total daily insulin Are you using right now? What's your like current body weight, etc? Should you be using this much insulin? is it taking this much more insulin to counter things? Or are you using like a heck of a lot more like let's call it Bolus insulin, right? But you see that your Bolus insulin is for a lot of corrections. And when you're looking at your data, you can see that the corrections are following lows. There again, more insulin than you really need. And thus your body is going to pack away by allowing the insulin to use up the food.
Scott Benner 13:38
It's funny because I wasn't 100% sure what you were gonna say today. And yet I feel like we're into this situation, again, where the podcast should maybe be three minutes long. And it should say limit your variability use the right amount of insulin. And it kind of addresses so many things. I know this isn't weight loss specific. But let me just ask you one question. How many people you know what percentage of people do you think just a guess, are are getting to reasonable outcomes by mistake. Like their bolusing too much, but they're eating on time and their basil is too low and it works out or their basil is too high and they eat before they get low. And they don't have to Bolus too much in it like how many people are getting there the wrong way, but it seems like it's working and then have underlying issues that they don't recognize. Like I
Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:35
wouldn't say it's I wouldn't say it's anywhere near a majority of people. Honestly, I'd say it's a small percentage of people who have figured out insulin needs. Even though the dosing strategy that they're using might be wrong, like you said, maybe there's way too little basil, but they're offsetting it with boluses and maybe the little amount of basil they're using is right for their overnights and that's why it looks stable or, you know, Vice So whatever. But I don't think that's the majority of people, I think the majority of people who are having issues with blood sugar fluctuations that they don't want, and also likely are having some issues with weight management of some type. It's, it's a start of let's look at what the initial factor could be insulin. And then you move on further. And you know, lifestyle is a big part of it, obviously. So then we look at things like calorie intake. And I think some of the some of the questions that came in were kind of, you know, around that, well, you know, I've run a calorie deficit, and I've like, run myself ragged, going to the gym, or, you know, exercising 90 hours a week. And it's still not working. But I, you know, and then, you know, there's the fasting component, and all of these things that people try to put into the picture. But from the standpoint of calorie, your calorie needs should meet your baseline kind of need, in general. And then if you were working out on top of that, or you know, a training athlete or whatnot, then calorie needs go up. But at a minimum, there is kind of a minimum, on average, that needs to be there. It's about 1000 calories a day, give or take person to person. But when you start dipping below that oftentimes what ends up happening is your body conserves. Because you're not meeting a need. And then you wonder, Well, I'm at a deficit, why am I not losing? Because
Scott Benner 16:38
your mind thinks you're lost on a desert island, and it doesn't, it's trying to hold on to everything you put inside? Exactly. I had that problem where I've, by eating more food, I've lost weight and eating less. It didn't, it didn't impact me as a fact. In fact, it sort of made me go the wrong way. So okay, so if someone asks you, is it not as simple as Hey, I need to lose weight? Can you tell me where to start? Is it really person to person? Like, because what do you have to do first, like, think about if you were listening to this right now? And you could be any of the varied people who are listening? like where do people start?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 17:17
I would definitely say with Well, first might even be an analysis of Where are you? And where do you want to be? Or where have you been weight wise, right? What's your goal to get to? And how much more Are you above that, then you want to be and also in that timeframe, it goes back to insulin analysis. If you've gained weight, as many people have in this past year, if you have gained weight, but your insulin doses haven't really shifted, there in lies a piece of the puzzle to write usually, for about a 10% change to your baseline like Wait, you're probably going to expect a need to change your your basil and your Bolus ratio is by about 10% as well, to be more aggressive and to take, you know, take into consideration that gain now when people are looking for loss. They're like, Yeah, but I don't want to use more insulin, because that's not going to work
Scott Benner 18:20
anything. Insulin, put the weight on them. Correct. Okay, gotcha.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:25
But really, they need to first manage their blood sugars. And then they can start working on whittling away or wiggling back and some of that comes into, okay, let's look at the lifestyle things. Let's look at are you exercising? Are you active enough? Does your calorie intake meet what your actual need is? You know, where can we whittle away some things so that weight comes down and along with it, then as you do lose? The same thing happens with insulin, your insulin doses should be adjusted back based on loss.
Scott Benner 18:59
You're making me think so strongly about when somebody comes to me and says, Hey, I just got diabetes, and I play a sport or my kid, you know, is on the team and we're so worried about this and I very badly don't want to give them a band aid answer about how to get through the sport I want to tell them let's take the time now and get your insulin right so that during the activity there really isn't any issue and it's hard for people to believe that once they've seen it once they see cause and effect once they say I ran around and my blood sugar went down. They imagine that is going to happen no matter what all the time. And I Ardennes. I'm sure you're the same way. But Arden's insulin so well balanced at this point, like activity doesn't make her lower or higher. Really, it's not it doesn't really change too much.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:46
Yeah, it depends. I think that brings in, you know, the consistency of exercise or activity, right. The more attune your body is, let's say you go out for an hour every single single day to get some form of real exercise right Your body gets used to that. So initially, you might see that your insulin needs drop off within the hours of the active time, right, and maybe even stretching several hours later, depending on what you did. But over time, that impact is lessened, you will usually need to be less aggressive with insulin adjustment, or maybe not at all. I mean, I can typically take my kids to the park and not really worried too much about that, unless I know I'm really going to run around crazy with them, and I likely have insulin on board. Right. So then something needs to be you know, offset. But, um, so yeah, I mean, once you get to the point of like, lifestyle adjustments, and a base insulin that's working, your fluxes in insulin dose, then will be minimized. I think, oh, sorry, go ahead, we'll
Scott Benner 20:52
see I think people need to be certain to that, once they start exercising their body is going to use the insulin better. The answer then is not to feed the low, it's to adjust the insulin, you know, maybe the first time you have to feed it, but then you have to learn from there and make an adjustment so that you're not constantly battling yourself because that is what happens, right? They exercise they get low, they eat it out, though it out. It overpowers what they meant to accomplish, okay,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:18
and then they and then you end up getting frustrated too. Well, goodness, you know, I go to the gym, but I have to eat like a whole sandwich and a half a banana in order to go to the gym and not have a low blood sugar. What's the purpose of that when I'm trying to lose weight, and then
Scott Benner 21:30
I stopped doing it because
Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:31
and they stopped doing it right. Or on the other side of it, you know, someone who may actually, okay, I'm going to really focus in on my diet, I'm going to clean it up, I'm going to you know, cut my macros down and actually meet the caloric need that I'm at right now. And then what they end up with many times are lows, especially the cleaner the diet gets, and the more accurate intake of calorie value is for that person, your insulin needs will actually come down sooner. So to avoid lows and needing to treat in the time period where you're really trying to be Let's be good, let's say right, just take your insulin doses down by maybe even it's just your basil, take it down by maybe five to 10% across the board.
Scott Benner 22:17
Okay? So it's get your insulin, right. So it's understand diabetes first. And then it's the normal stuff, we all talk about it being active, getting your heart rate up. A sedentary lifestyle leads to more resistant blood sugars, which leads to more insulin, which probably leads to more lows, because you get out of balance, blood sugars, and what you just said, about clean eating. We don't really talk about it like we like if we were all out in a field, okay, let's say if it was 400 years ago, and somehow insulin existed, but we were still just farming and breakfast might be an apple you found on the ground, and maybe on Wednesday, if you're lucky. The guy up the street kills an elk. And we get a steak right? Like if we were still eating like that, and we had manmade insulin, people would not be using nearly as much as long as they use now, Jenny?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:14
Oh, no, not at all. I mean, if you were living on like, berries that you picked along the trail that you were tracking the elk on and then you stopped and you ate some of the watercress. Hey, get your vitamin C out of the like stream that floated by whatever. No, what No,
Unknown Speaker 23:33
you might not need as much insulin right?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:34
No, you wouldn't. You're also active level that I mean most like let's call them you know, cave dwellers or whatever at that point of life, right? activity was part of your day. They didn't have a gym that they went to. Their hunt for the bison man was like, act.
Scott Benner 23:53
I bet you're running from a mountain lion burns carbs. What do you think? What do you think? So I guess my point is, is that while I'm not telling anybody how to eat, and I'm not certainly telling you that my daughter's counting macros or anything like that. Processed foods, right? manmade foods, stuff that comes in bags, oils that don't belong in your body, all the stuff that we consume all the time that we're not aware of. It's making your variability greater and it's making it more difficult for you to use insulin
Jennifer Smith, CDE 24:24
true in fact, I've also kind of heard people and there's truth to it.
Scott Benner 24:39
Hey, let's not let's not waste any time shall we? just did it nice. How I said let's not waste any time it took me 10 seconds to say let's not waste any time then I went over it for 10 more seconds. I better jump in. Get yourself a Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor why you'll be able to see trends, directions impacts of insulin on blood sugars, impacts of food on blood sugars, the impacts of life on type one diabetes, you'll see it all with your Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. And how does it do that? Well, it shows you your blood sugar in real time, not just the number, but the speed and direction of your blood sugar. Are you 184 and dropping or rising or stable? That's a big deal, isn't it? Because in each of those three situations, you might do something different. A rising blood sugar might get some insulin, falling blood sugar might warrant you paying attention to it, and say it's super stable, right where you want it, you know, you've done the right thing. The Dexcom g six gives that feedback in real time in ways that is so usable, you hear us talk about it all the time on the podcast. So check it out. dexcom.com, forward slash juicebox. Sure, there's alarms, you can set, those are a big deal, too. You can say, I'd like to know if I'm going below 80. Or if I'm going above 140. And it'll tell you don't want to know till you're 160, you can change that, that's up to you. The Dexcom g six is a vital tool. If you're using insulin, I'm talking about type one or type two, check it out, support the podcast when you do use the links in your show notes. Or type in dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. After that, you're gonna want an insulin pump. Right? Maybe you don't have one and you want one, I say check out the Omni pod, you have a different pump. And you're a little sick of the tubing. I say check out the Omni pod. You use an MDI giving yourself the shots and you're kind of sick of it. You know what I say? Check out the Omni pod, do that Omni pod.com forward slash juice box, you have two options when you get there. You can see if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash system. And I mean 30 days is like a long time. And it's free. Or ask for a free no obligation demo pod where on the pod will just send you out one nonworking pod. So you can try it on and see what you think there's a lot of options when you get to that link. All of them are going to give you more information and help you make a good decision. On the pod.com forward slash juice box, use an insulin pump that doesn't have tubing that doesn't need to be taken off when you shower, or run or kick a ball. an insulin pump it doesn't have something on it along to from an infusion set back to a controller that can get caught on a doorknob or just kind of be a pain to carry around. When you like to carry nothing, just have that little pod on that talks wirelessly to a device where you give yourself insulin, not something that's tethered to you with tubing full of insulin. And they if you don't want it on the pod, whatever, do the trial, say you don't like it, don't like it. Nobody's holding you up, can do whatever you want, but at least then you'll have real data to make decisions with. As you know, I think data is very important. Okay, that's it on the pod.com forward slash juice box dexcom.com forward slash juice box links in the show notes links at Juicebox podcast.com. And again, if you're looking for these diabetes pro tip episodes, you can find them they started Episode 210 in your podcast player, where they're available at diabetes, pro tip calm and Juicebox Podcast comm
Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:38
many people have found that if they eat a true cart, let's say they eat an apple and they Bolus for it, they end up with the ratio that they're using for that simple, like very clean carb to go low. Okay, and then when they mix it up, and let's say they have potato chips or something along with the apple or they have something, you know, more processed along with it, their carb count ends up looking clean, like okay, it comes out I don't get low later. So what gives it really is that the body processes more natural food in a better way. There's there's less left over to kind of linger in impact. And a lot of people are basing their insulin to carb ratios, more specifically, around combination meals that are not quite as for lack of a better term clean,
Scott Benner 29:36
right. So your your heavier. Insulin ratios work better if you have the orange with the potato chips, but if you just eat the orange, the orange doesn't need as much insulin so the ratios you have or too heavy. Correct. I now Arden's ratios are heavier because she doesn't you know she eats a diet that has processed foods mixed into it, but she'll go on a kick around this time. If you're about oranges, where I have to buy like 10 pound bags of oranges to keep around the house, and she's like, I want an orange I want like now these are big like softball size oranges that I'm going to
Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:10
cara, Cara oranges. Those are my fav.
Scott Benner 30:12
Yeah, I think they are and they're really good, right? And but I bet you I've never looked, but I bet you that the carb count on them's got to be more like 25 or something like that, like he could be more, right. But I only give her enough insulin for like 11 carbs. And and she does a little 130 rise and comes back again. Because I you know, because I know her ratio is higher to handle other things, which is why you look at plates and go Okay, tonight, I don't need as much, you know, for right. But this is not this is not going to be a satisfying, you know, people just want to hear like, please just tell me what to do. And I'll do it right. So work, but nobody wants to hear. I guess this? I know, I don't like it. You know what I mean? I don't have diabetes, and I'm listening. I was like, Oh, this is how I would lose weight. So you know, it's, um, it's just, do you think that we've just spent so much time as a society looking for marketable sellable ideas about how to get around? The idea of being in shape? There's no, it's, it's exercise and calories. Right.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 31:21
And I think that's the reason that there are so many, I mean, if you look at around the first of the year, there, I can't remember which publication it is. But they come out with an analysis of I think, like the top most, or maybe it's the 25, top most like us call them diets, right, in the past year, and what's kind of proven true to what it promotes and what really isn't, it's kind of like flimsy, right? Um, and some of the top ones are things like the Mediterranean diet. And you know, by no means am I promoting that, or whatever. I'm just saying that that ends up being taught from a lot of different health parameters. And it's also a clean way of eating. Most people think Mediterranean and they think well, lots of breads and lots of starchy things. And that's actually not true. A lot of it is plants, especially the really good non starchy vegetable types of plants. And then if there are grains that are hardier grains, right? I mean, it doesn't tell you to eat your carbs as a bag of Doritos. It tells you to go and eat some keen Wah On your salad with, you know, an orange on the side. Right. But I think it brings in diets. Yeah, this idea that there is the perfect thing out there.
Scott Benner 32:43
Right, right, and that it's going to be doable for somebody because maybe, listen, maybe macro counting, maybe there's a biologist somewhere that could give you the perfect diet for your body. But where am I getting that from? And where are most people getting that I have to tell you that a couple of weeks ago, I started getting an ad, right. And then I looked in the mirror and I was like, My face looks puffy. And I went to the Costco and I bought two little roaster, chickens, and four steaks. I spoke them all, slice them up, put them in the refrigerator, and I've been eating those and salads and some of those oranges because they're around the house. for about the past eight or nine days, I'm easily 10 pounds lighter than I was. And I know that I know, I'm a fluctuating person. Like I know I jumped around like because what'll happen is at some point, someone's going to give me a piece of bread and I'm going to pick Oh my god, bread does everyone remember Fred? And then I'm going to eat a lot of bread for a week and I'm going to go Oh, now my back's deaf. And I feel like I gained five pounds and all that stuff. But just if I explained to you that most of my meals have been like a couple of eggs in the morning, and a couple of tiny slices off of that steak and then at lunch, some some of the chicken and some of the steak with a salad. And I've I feel great and I know it's true, because I've been through it enough now now to talk my stupid childish inside into like just continuing on that way that I don't know if I'm ever gonna get to do but I do know it's honest. And it works for me. And I've seen it work for other people too. Like you take out processed food and carbs. And your your you're better off like I don't know, it just seems obvious. But
Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:16
it's, it's you know, like you said you're not focusing on like macros. You're not focusing on how many do I need in a day? You're what we end up finding and I think this is the premise behind a lot of the like, the Palio kind of diet and the keto type of diet, right. It's, if you're following the rules of those plans pretty well. They can be very clean eating plan. They can. There can also just like being vegetarian can be or vegan can be very healthy way of eating, but they're also like the complete like backside of that where you're eating a lot of processed vegan or like the key You know, like kinds of things that are like the treats and whatnot, you're focusing your intake on a lot of that kind of stuff, you're lacking in quality. And then your macros may very well without you realizing it be completely out of order. And I think that's why a lot of like plans like this end up failing, you know, I followed keto. And it was supposed to be this magic, like weight loss, and I also have diabetes, and it was really supposed to help with my blood sugar management and whatnot, well, I haven't lost any weight, well, maybe there are some things then to evaluate within it, you know, the keto diet is a way to get your body to start utilizing fat instead of carbs. So if you haven't really analyzed how you've broken that down to make sure that you are one maintaining ketosis in the right way. And that the kinds of like carbs that you're eating are really not offsetting, then it may not work well for you,
Scott Benner 36:03
don't you find that you have to be in tune with what your what satisfies your body? Like Not, not what satisfies your brain, right? But what satisfies your body. And I've absolutely, I've seen myself go either way, like where you're just eating for taste and flavor and comfort. And that's never usually good for your body. And then there's a way where you're just sort of never hungry. It's it's that's where I am this week, I have not been hungry this week. And if I had any like inkling towards a sweet, I've been specifically careful to take just like dark chocolate, like just a little bit of dark chocolate like this will this will get me through, like, what I'm assuming is basically withdrawals from flour and sugar and stuff like that, you know? So I don't know, like, are you telling? He's telling me that all these questions aren't even worth looking at? Or should we ask them? No, I
Jennifer Smith, CDE 36:53
think they're very worth looking at, because I think some of them may relate to what we've kind of already gotten into. And then some of them, I think, are really good questions in terms of the why it wouldn't be working. Right what's or why it might actually work. So yeah, let's
Scott Benner 37:12
pick a favorite or should I just pick, you just pick right? Well, so Jennifer's asking about her son, she says any any advice on how to balance all this high carb gluten free food from my growing always hungry, 14 year old T one D with celiac. So she has a son who seems to need blending down and at the same time. She's giving him a lot of carb heavy stuff, because it's like it's some of this. For the celiac diet, it seems like right? The gluten stuff,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:43
right? And that's it. I mean, celiac is a hard addition. It definitely is because while we now have a plethora of gluten free, very tasty products on the market, most of them are made with very, very processed very high glycaemic, I mean higher glycaemic than even your wheat based bread, you know, type of pasta, whatever it might be. So when you start processing things, like rice into a flower, or, you know, potato into a flower, you have a quicker digestive component to that, and it raises the blood sugar faster, its glycemic index is just high comparatively. So when you have to do these types of things, especially if you have a teen who is growing, is active, but also could maybe use some slimming down, or maybe needs to gain a bit of weight. One, it's may be sitting down honestly, with a dietitian to see what are my child's growing nutrition needs right now? Are we you know, keeping kind of a log a couple of days of what are they really in taking? And then looking at what their nutrition needs should be for the point in life where they are, you know, are they moderately active? Are they heavily active? Are they kind of couch potato video gamers? What is it and what do they need? And then looking at the kind of food that you put into their caloric need, right, again, I mean, parents are typically the purchasers of the food in the house. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 39:27
give or take. You don't think this 14 year olds got a credit card?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:30
Yeah, no, I mean, and my kids, gosh, I mean, if we walk down the aisles in a grocery store, and they see like, the pretty packages and you know, like, I never got we don't eat cereal, so I don't go down the cereal aisle, but they'll always have something on like an end cap, you know, at the grocery, especially my eight year old, like, boy, that looks really good mom. I'm like yeah, and not really good for your body.
Scott Benner 39:56
That's why they have to make the picture. So nice. Right? There's no fun here, stop it.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:04
Well, so I think, you know, from from that standpoint, you have to look at what is the child in need of? Are you meeting it? are you creating access? And then potentially from a gluten free standpoint? Yeah, finding substitutions that can be fit in to meet his tastes, because all kids and teens are different, you know, as much as you want them to eat asparagus, they might not. Yeah, so you know,
Scott Benner 40:29
right. So, so you have to be, it's Listen, I know, if you've been listening for a while, you know that I took me a while to diagnose my low iron thing years ago. And during that a doctor made me eat like, gluten free for a month, and I gained a lot of weight because I went out and bought all these gluten free items. And somehow in my mind, I was like gluten free equals health. That's how it felt to me. So I was like, oh, it felt like zero calorie stuff when I was going in. And man, it was just not. I think if this was me, if Jennifer was me, and I didn't know what I was doing, I think I'd introduce, like, lower carb, more meat friendly, like meals, like that's what would occur to me first, right? Make some chicken, make some steak, put it with a salad or a vegetable, and maybe cut down on carbs. But then you got to remember, like we spoke about earlier, not to dose it as harshly as you would some of this gluten free stuff, or you're just going to create a low and you're and then have what you did buy with them. Right?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:27
And I think you know, when we look at, you know, going back to just that, like clean eating idea, quite honestly, you can be gluten free. If you're choosing to not buy as much processed food pretty easily. Yeah, I mean, you know, things like qinhuai, or, like a wild rice, or even like a brown rice, or what, that's 100% gluten free.
Scott Benner 41:52
It's the fun stuff where it causes your problem,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:55
right, it's not taking it out of the diet, it's just that you know, and I know the struggle with kids, I work with plenty kids and teens to know that what they get at home, under mom and dad influence because this is what you're eating turns around, it changes considerably once they start to do things with their friends, you know, now gluten free in the picture. If the child is paying attention to that, and knows that they just can't have gluten, they may already then have limitations, even compared to what their friends are eating, because they know that they just can't do it, or they're not going to feel good, right? But in that circumstance, then it kind of takes sitting down and figuring out well what that what will possibly be there that you could have, um, knowing that it's still more of like a process Trini kind of thing, but also that, you know, we're not going to do this at home. But you could have it when you're out.
Scott Benner 42:54
Okay. Laura has a question. It says, Is it true that insulin on board prevents the body from breaking down fat? Meaning that in order to burn fat, you need to have stretches of time with only your Basal insulin and no insulin on board? That's interesting. I've never heard that.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 43:11
Yeah, it is, I guess it's an interesting way to frame it. I mean, we know that in the we know that in the overnight time period, without any food on board. And on basil, only. Our body does get into more of that, like fasting state, right, of actually transitioning to some fat burn, etc. Because you're on a low level of insulin.
Unknown Speaker 43:34
I see what you're saying. Okay.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 43:36
But when you have insulin on board, technically, there's a reason for the insulin on board. Right? Right. You're dosing for food, so that insulin on board should be covering food that is there. So yes, your body's processing carbohydrates. And your body is not at that point then going to be in fat burn mode. It's kind of correct in a way of stating it. Yes. I mean, the same thing for a high blood sugar that you've corrected. Now you've got iob. And the high blood sugar indicates that there's excessive sugar there, and your body needs to process it. And as such, it's using the insulin to process it and break it down and get it in the right places. So again, technically, as long as there's not an insulin deficit in that high blood sugar scenario, and insulin is working to get it down then your body isn't also breaking down fats either. Then is that a vote for intermittent fasting for type ones? It could be and can intermittent fasting work, right? It can. But again, a blanket statement is to stay that any plan that you choose. No longer term that you can continue this, right? The problem with the diets that are out there isn't the diet itself. In fact, there's a lot of research around a lot of the diets that proves long term, these people have had this success in weight management and cardiovascular benefit, etc, etc. But they've stuck with it. Yeah, it is the Oh, I'm going to do intermittent fasting, oh, I'm going to do the keto diet, oh, I'm going to do the, you know, cabbage soup diet for the next month. And once it starts kind of showing benefit, I'm like, I can do I can kind of step outside of the rules, parameters, which are often for diets very black and white. Yes, do this, this and this, but don't do this. And as soon as you do that, don't do this. You've broken the piece of that plan. That was getting you to your goal,
Scott Benner 45:52
right. I found intermittent fasting, the easiest to stick with, because to me what it was was as long as I don't eat, like don't eat after ate, and don't eat before noon. That is basically how I did it. And I have to admit, it's very effective. Now, I realized while I was doing it, that Arden basically does that already, without the late night thing. But she's so young, I don't think it matters, right. But she gets up in the morning and is not normally hungry in the morning. And so I've had to over time thoughtfully balance out how her insulin works in the morning, right? How do I come out of sleep into feet on the floor, off to school without a rise that needs a bunch of insulin so that I don't create a low because she really doesn't want to eat until she's done with school or till lunchtime, right? Sure. So basically, Arden does intermittent fast, except she doesn't do 16 is it 16 wait 1819 2016 eight, that was embarrassing. A lot of people would edit that out, but I'm not going to. She doesn't do 16 eight and as much as she probably does, like, maybe 1410 something like that. But also she's 16 so she can write you know, she can like we over Bolus her meal last night for dinner. We had stuffed peppers, like Turkey stuffed peppers, and, and a salad. And my wife, my wife, like swung at it really hard. And about a half hour after she ate I was like, Hey, your blood sugar is like stuck at seven. I was like I This doesn't look okay to me. Like I think this is gonna go the wrong way. You know. And so as it started to trend away, Arden got a little light in her eye and she goes cinnamon toast crunch, please. So she knew she had basically Pre-Bolus cereals. So she was like, let's do it. And she had some of that have my wife go on. I'm gonna guess 10 or 15 carbs less on the Bolus. She hit it right on she was so close. But But you know, that's a young kid. And Arden's also helped by other things that I think are worth mentioning here too. Because those of you listening have type one diabetes, or love somebody who does, you really have to get your thyroid levels checked. Like you could be fighting against a borderline thyroid problem that's making weight loss impossible. You know, and you if you're going to do that you really need to go back and listen to the thyroid episode with Dr. Benito because the range that your doctor is gonna say your thyroid your TSH levels, okay, and a real badass endocrinologist will not accept you know, they mean they will not like if you're over a two Doctor beanitos giving you thyroid hormone like and there are people right now we're listening. You're like oh, my TSH is a five my doctor said it's okay. I'm borderline. Yeah, yeah, right. But I but my hair does fall out a little bit or I'm having trouble losing weight or I'm a little nasty sometimes or whatever the other things come. But I'm just telling you if your thyroids moving the wrong way, deal with it, because it makes a lot of life easier.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 48:56
And it's a lot within this whole topic of weight management. Absolutely. If you've the Hashi moto is which is very common autoimmune. Once you've got you know, type one, it's good to get tested thyroid levels at least once a year if not every six months, especially if you've got other family who has a thyroid disorder known already. But that's huge in terms of metabolic
Scott Benner 49:20
Yeah, but you have to you have to advocate for yourself. You can't say oh my god, Scott, you're right. I am tired all the time and I can't lose weight and blah blah blah, and then go to the doctor and the doctor say Oh your TSH is four you're fine your TSH just for you are not fine. That's the equivalent That to me is the thyroid equivalent of in diabetes. When somebody says yeah, your blood sugar, your average blood sugar is 180 You're doing great. Right? Right. You might you know you're not dying, but you you're not living at a healthy level. And that has other impacts on your life. This thyroid thing is it is crazy. It is like the equivalent you trust me at this point. I've seen everyone in my family except for me deal with it. It's like taking a long metal like paper. clip and just touching it on a computer circuit board. It just messes with stuff, you know what I mean? Yeah, but,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 50:06
and with with Ardennes doses, have you noticed that when things get out of order, do you notice a shift in her insulin need, because that's very common right away that, you know, metabolically, she's feeling more sluggish, sluggish and fatigued. And insulin is just not working, like it was supposed to work. And if there's a timeframe in terms of adjustment, or even just starting on a thyroid medication, where you will then start to notice a shift back to normal insulin dosing. See, again, that insulin manipulation in terms of the weight management piece with thyroid in the picture, you have to be very kind of eyes on right to make sure that you're adjusting then where you had bumped everything up in terms of insulin need, you're going to need to start bumping down. And if there's weight loss in the picture at the same time, definite need to bump down or you're gonna just run lows. Yeah,
Scott Benner 51:01
I there's something I use, I think I should even have a flowchart for myself like If This Then That kind of chart because you're right. If the thyroid level starts to get away, then her insulin needs go up. And then we adjusted, it doesn't happen right away, and our insulin needs start coming back down again, the same thing with she had to start a birth control pill to regulate her periods. Hall. I lost three months of my life to figuring that out. Like it was just first they gave her a pill with not enough estrogen in it. So it was basically just two wasted months. She was exhausted all the time because she was bleeding constantly. So I had to get her through those pills. Those aren't the right pills put her on the right pill that started working the bleeding, regulated. Yay. Now she's lost so much blood, I had to go get her an iron infusion. Got her the iron infusion. Now we're waiting for that to come back up. When the iron infusion comes on board, her insulin needs are gonna change again. Yeah, vitamin D levels seem to impact insulin knee. Yes.
I just,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 52:05
in fact, many people for vitamin D that you bring it up. That's another like piece. And I think in terms of like, like, again, going down the rabbit hole of discussion and weight management, the we're kind of on the track of like medications, and medications in terms of thyroid, as well as things like iron. But vitamin D, you know, your lab will tell you optimal is between or standard is 30 to 100 optimal according to the female specific physician that I'd worked with years ago, before I had my first son, she was like, you know, optimal range is really 50 to 70. For vitamin D, she's like, and if it is not in there, you need to be being supplemented, because otherwise, especially with diabetes, vitamin D works on the cellular level. And it allows insulin to be seen correctly, it for lack of a better term by the cells. And so it lets insulin actually work the way that it's meant to have one of the many things that can so if your vitamin D level is off, supplement, I mean, in general, someone with type one, adult wise, should be supplementing at least 2000 I use a day. And if your levels are not optimized at least 4000 a day. And if they're really on the low end, you need to be doing like the hyper significant doses of vitamin D for a short period of time, if you
Scott Benner 53:30
like. And then for 50,000, I use and you take one once a week or something like
Jennifer Smith, CDE 53:34
once a week, or I've even seen some doctors do like 110 1000 iu a day for you know, a couple of weeks and then retest. But vitamin D is huge.
Scott Benner 53:43
And I'm not a doctor, but there's something about vitamin D deficiency and autoimmune that go hand in hand. So just look
Jennifer Smith, CDE 53:50
at the studies out of Finland,
Scott Benner 53:52
right? I listen, I take 5000 a day. And I take 5000 a day of vitamin D, I take a zinc tablet, I taken a sorbic acid with iron and a B 12. And that's that's what I do every day. And that's what you know, my kids do and and everyone here is doing because when the D levels drop again, problems with insulin, I'll tell you right now too, because Jenny mentioned ranges that you need to be in versus what lab values will tell you, Dr. Benito back on the thyroid things that if you were a woman of childbearing years, anything under 74, your ferritin is too low. And they're not going to tell you you're low till 20. So she's like if you are having a period, he gotta be above 70. And so there's a lot of things. And then all of these things also impact your body's ability to work correctly, which is in part and parcel of losing weight or
Jennifer Smith, CDE 54:50
losing weight, right. There was one in here that does go along with medications that I think is a really important question. This woman has a son on a medication that is more for like attention. And it's specific to using it versus not using it school year versus spring date break or summer time and what ends up happening in terms of insulin needs. And I think it's an important one, because I've seen a lot of kids who are using a DD ADHD kinds of meds. And a very, very common thing with those is that it decreases appetite. Okay. And if they're using it in their school day, and they're also the brain uses carbs. And so the more thinking that's going on, and the potential that they're really not hungry, they may not even finish the lunch that you packed for them, they may pick at the lunch that comes from the school lunch, because their brain is just saying, I'm not hungry enough to eat, you may end up having to have two types of basil profiles, maybe one for like a spring break, time off another one for school days. And again, as kids get more into the teen years, that becomes really beneficial in terms of growth and the potential for weight gain in the wrong direction. Because if you're constantly feeding loads again, or constantly adjusting insulin up and down, but it's kind of willy nilly and not quite right on with need. It's a medication adjustment kind of thing that goes along with adjusting insulin
Scott Benner 56:31
again. We're right up on it. But there's enough questions in here that all circle around menopause. Do you have any feelings about what happens at that time? And
Unknown Speaker 56:41
yeah,
Unknown Speaker 56:42
that's a fun one.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 56:45
I mean, in general menopause in and of itself. I mean, perimenopause really is the start of kind of that time period in a woman's life where your cycles might start to get less evenly spaced, right, let's say you were the typical, like, 29 days, and you was right on spot. And now like, Huh, now it's like 26 days and next month, and might be 32 days, and that may be 29 days. And, you know, periods can get a little bit more aggressive, or kind of look more spotty. But that perimenopause kind of leading into menopause, which is really, a woman has not had a cycle in a 12 month time period. Right. So insulin needs can look very jumpy, you might even find that, again, as we get older. And these things come into the picture from a female perspective, our metabolism does slow down, we oftentimes start to need a little bit more insulin, or it takes a little bit more activity to maintain or burn off what we were able to do when we were 30. That doesn't work anymore when you're 45 or 50. So a menopause, perimenopause, it brings in a whole circle of hormone impact, right, that may more aggressively change your insulin needs, especially around your cycle times.
Scott Benner 58:10
So not unlike, well, I guess, more aggressive but not unlike having your period and seeing right hormone fluctuations throughout the month,
Jennifer Smith, CDE 58:19
right. And then once you're in menopause, oftentimes, you know, outwards of a year or two post no longer having a cycle. Many times, then insulin levels should get more stable, because you don't have that hormone flux. And as we age men and women have less and less and less growth hormone cycling anyway. And so we end up especially women passed about the age of 65, or people passed about the age of 65. Oftentimes, their baseline Basal needs definitely go down. And the reason there is because their hormone cycling has kind of started dropping off. Okay.
Scott Benner 59:01
All right. Did we do this justice in an hour? Because I feel like we did, but I don't know much.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 59:06
I think that we did as much as we could get it in an hour. I mean, if we really wanted to focus in again, dig really deep into that information hole. There's a whole bunch about meds that are very specific to like weight loss, and you know, things like the GLP ones and things like the stlt tos and what despite them being type two meds, they are getting a lot more. They're kind of climbing on the ladder of benefit for those with type one and who are just insulin users. And they do have promise in terms of weight management, if use the correct way.
Unknown Speaker 59:51
Okay, so
Scott Benner 59:53
do you feel comfortable talking about that? Because maybe you say here that if you like this episode, look for that one coming in? Yeah. Okay. Great, thank you. Yeah, Jenny, you have to do all the talking. I was at some points. uncomfortable. Not for because he was like, Huh, there's not a lot for me to do here. I was just checking. I was just saving files and checking rates and looking at questions I
Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:00:18
was like, so like, I should have just gone and gotten an extra cup of tea.
Scott Benner 1:00:21
kind of nice. I should have just said, Jenny, tell me about weight loss. I'll be back.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:00:26
Really is I was looking at all the questions. I mean, there are a lot of really good questions, but I think a lot of them honestly. Go back to insulin. Yeah. dosing it the right way for what you're kind of taking in. And then also, secondly, looking at what are you taking in,
Scott Benner 1:00:45
right? And obviously, in my mind, these questions all are, they're similar, they're tied together, whether it's vitamins, or your thyroid level, or your calories or, or whatever it ends up being, there is a balance that optimizes your body, it's not going to be the same for everybody, some people's vitamin D level can be crashy load to the floor, and they'll never notice it, and it won't matter to them. But for some people it does. And when you get those things in the right balance, then you feel better and feeling better. To me, as you feel stronger, you're more rested, like all this stuff happens. You're clear in your mind. But how. But some of these things nobody would even know to look into. No, you know, even vitamin D like I can remember 10 years ago, my ardens nurse practitioner gone, we're gonna start checking vitamin D was almost like a mandate came down from a mountain, you know what I mean?
Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:01:35
Yeah, actually, I don't even know when that would have been. But if it wasn't, I remember when I was working in DC, and the endo practice I worked with within the, our director was very, like high up within the whole, like, diabetes management, like realm of information. And his he was like, we are testing vitamin D levels for every person with diabetes. And at that point, it was really just, if the thought was it was relevant more to type two. But as we started testing, then I went to my own end to when I was like, you know, I run I'm outside all the time. I have, like, you know, like brown skin from being outside. Like, I don't take my, I'm like, I'm sure it's fine. In fact, my vitamin D level came back and my doctor himself called me, not his nurse. He was like, this is really weird. But he's like, I want you to go and get it tested again. He's like, this can't be right. And my level was 18. Yeah. 18. And so when it got to test again, nope, it was 18. Again, he was like he did he that was the one time a week the 50,000 I use, I came back in eight weeks, it had moved to 21. And he was like, Huh, so I he sent me to see like a naturopath, who was also a physician who knew a little bit more in that realm. And she actually had me started, she started me on oral drops, okay, and the drops get absorbed through your oral mucosa rather than having to go through your gut. And because we know there's a lot in terms of gut and absorption in autoimmune disorders, she's like, I guarantee your body's not absorbing it. She said that's the problem. And is within about I think it was 10 weeks after that I got it retested and was already up in the high 40s. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:03:25
you know, I have to, I thought I was gonna have to live getting iron infusions my whole life, because I couldn't absorb it through my gut. And I do probably have some like weird stuff going on down there. And instead, I mix it. So first of all, I use a really pure like supplement from a company that you know, you can do your own research and find one that you like for yourself, but I researched out found a really pure supplement. And I have to take the iron within a sorbic acid at the same time. I do that it absorbs great if I take just the iron tablet without the sorbic acid won't won't work. Yeah, that's it. There's a over the counter when called via Tron or by Tron D or something like that. It's it's iron that comes with it. C, Vitamin C. Okay, gather that helps that too. But yeah, these are the kinds of things no one's going to tell you about. Or they're just gonna blurt out. We're testing for vitamin D Now, then you come back, quote, unquote, in range, and they don't give you one anyway. And you're like, wow, this was a lot of fun. So anyway, everybody balanced your body, balance your insulin. things should get better. That makes sense. All right. Thank you, Jenny.
Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:04:30
Yeah, you're welcome. Absolutely.
Scott Benner 1:04:38
Let me thank Dexcom and Omni pod for sponsoring this episode of the Juicebox Podcast. I'd also of course like to thank Jenny, you know, Jenny works for integrated diabetes. So if you want to learn more about what she does for a living, you could even hire her. You go to integrated diabetes comm I think there's even a link in the show notes to email Jenny, but I don't remember I haven't looked in a while. You'll find out, just go route around, see what you can say? Would you like to see if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash, go to Omni pod.com forward slash juice box. And of course, to learn more about the Dexcom g six and to get started, it's dexcom.com forward slash juice box there are links in your show notes, links at Juicebox Podcast comm or you can just type those right into a browser. Since we're at the end, and you're still here, let me tell you a little more about the diabetes pro tip series. First, I'm going to read you a couple of reviews, all from Apple podcasts, this podcast that changed my life, I had a desire to lower my agency and manage my blood sugar's better, but was going at it blindly finding this podcast put everything into a tangible and practical management approach that is taken my agency from 8.3 to 6.3 in less than six months. And that's just right now, it's going to keep coming down. Thank you, Scott, I'll be quoting you forever. My son was diagnosed with type one about five months ago. And I've learned so much from just the pro tip shows and we'll be listening to all of the episodes. This podcast is amazing both for the information and for the shared experiences from Scott and his guests that make you feel less like you just got hit in the face with a shovel. And more like you can find ways of keeping your loved ones happy and healthy. And finally, I saw I mentioned this podcast and one of the Dexcom g six groups on Facebook. The pro tip series is filled with such great information. Thank you. For someone who has been living with diabetes for 30 plus years. I wish I had been more proactive in finding the information sooner. I'm going to recommend this to my endocrinologist. So that's a little bit about the diabetes pro tip series and the podcast from other people. You can just subscribe right now in a podcast player just hit subscribe if you're there, and you can listen to the podcast every week, three new episodes every week. If you don't know how to find a podcast player, there's tons of links to free ones at Juicebox Podcast comm where if you want to start with those diabetes pro tip episodes, or in my opinion, I like seeing you start with the defining diabetes episodes which are much shorter, and give you a good basis for all the terminology means and how to use it. All that information is at diabetes pro tip comm you can get there just by typing that into a browser. Or if you go to Juicebox Podcast comm there are links to the top one of those links as diabetes pro tip. start listening. I mean, wouldn't you love to send a review and that says my agency went from eight three to six three in less than six months would be amazing. So I hope you keep listening. I hope you enjoy the podcast. Thank you so much for checking out this episode. Please share the podcast with a friend. And don't forget to subscribe. Thank you so much. I'll be back soon with more episodes of the Juicebox Podcast.
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#462 After Dark: Sexual Assault and PTSD
ADULT TOPIC WARNING. Sexual Assault, PTSD and Type 1 Diabetes
TRIGGER WARNING: This is a frank discussion with a female assault survivor.
Today's guest is a female assault survivor living with type 1 diabetes. This is her story.
You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Amazon Alexa - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio - Radio Public or their favorite podcast app.
+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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 462 of the Juicebox Podcast.
I'm gonna start this episode a little differently than I do normally. First of all, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. But more importantly, if you feel like you can be adversely triggered by conversations about sexual assault, or you're under 18, you should probably just stop this episode right now. This episode is part of our after dark series after dark began back in 2019. With Episode 274 about drinking. We then went to weed smoking, trauma and addiction, sex from different perspectives depression and self harm, divorce, bipolar disorder, bulimia, heroin addiction, and we even talked to somebody about how to use psychedelic drugs when you have type one. So these episodes are specifically about the stuff that no one talks about, from the perspective of a person living with Type One Diabetes.
Today's episode is about sexual assault, and PTSD. We're going to want to figure out how to say this too. Okay. So the person you're going to hear on the episode today is anonymous. About a month or so ago, I recorded an episode with them that had nothing to do with any of this. And a few weeks later, I received a note that said, I know I just recorded with you. But I'd like to do an after dark episode about PTSD and sexual assault. She said the entire experience related to her diabetes quite a bit. And she wanted to share with all of you. So because we'd already done an episode together, where she was clear about who she was and her name. But that episode had not come out. I just destroyed that episode. So you'll have no way of knowing who this person is. And we sat and recorded this, I do not believe that the recording of this episode was easy for the person you're about to hear. And it was not easy for me. It is however, eye opening and enlightening and useful, very useful information for people to have. Now this is not a graphic retelling of what happened. But it is a step by step conversation. So it can be very stressful at times. We're very careful to not use too many words that you might find distressing. But it is what it is. And there's no getting around that. Now I don't normally do this. But this is an email that I received from the person you're about to hear. This email came after we recorded this show. She said I just want to thank you again for recording with me. I took some time to think about it. And I think our conversation went incredibly well. I was hoping that you could add some links to resources, which I was definitely going to do already. She says she's never used them herself, but there's rain. And in just a moment. I'll give you links to that. She asked me to be sure to put a warning at the beginning which again we were going to do and then she said I really appreciate you recording this with me. I know it was tough. I really appreciate your willingness to have the conversation. I know that it was a lot. Again, I think the conversation went great. I hope you know how powerful the podcast is on so many levels. And thank you for working hard for people with type one diabetes. It really means a lot I just want you to know as you're listening, the person who had this conversation is incredibly comfortable with what they said and what you're about to hear. If you need support you can try rainn.org are a i n n dot o RG is the National Sexual Assault hotline. It's confidential and has 24 seven support they offer online chatting where you can call them at 1-800-656-4673 This is a crisis support service for sexual assault and harassment. They're not going to be any ads in this episode because honestly it just feels weird to me. I do want to thank on the pod Dexcom the Contour Next One blood glucose meter touched by type one and G vo glucagon for their continued support which makes content like this and the rest of the show possible. Okay, here we go. There's a person with me here whose name we're not going to use. And usually somebody This is the point where you hear like, Hi my name is but we're not going to do that and you're going to see why in a moment. But I guess we Start with just some general stuff. So you have type one diabetes, right?
Anonymous Speaker 5:04
Yes. I was diagnosed at seven in 2001.
Scott Benner 5:10
Okay. So long time ago, like 20 years ago. Yeah. puts you in your late 20s. Now,
Unknown Speaker 5:17
the word late is you didn't enjoy. Sorry.
Unknown Speaker 5:20
Oh, painful Not gonna lie. But yes, my late to I'm 27
Scott Benner 5:23
All right, well, why don't we call it your mid 20s? And just thank you so much. Oh, why do that? That seems like the way to go. Yeah, so you're in your mid 20s now. And let's I guess let's just get a little bit out of the way about your your management, stuff like that. So you're using a pump or MDI, or how do you do things?
Anonymous Speaker 5:41
So I use an omni pod? And I am a recent user of the Dexcom. I just started it in October. Okay.
Scott Benner 5:49
Yeah. Prior to that, what were you doing?
Anonymous Speaker 5:52
Just regular checking, blood sugar tracking and Omni pod? I started an omni pod about seven years ago. So I've been on on an omni pod for seven years has been fantastic. That drop my agency quite a bit. And then with the start of the ducks calm, my most recent a one See, I can't even believe it was 5.6.
Unknown Speaker 6:15
Wow, congratulations. Yeah. Thank
Unknown Speaker 6:16
you with the with the help of the podcast, of course. Well,
Scott Benner 6:20
yes, obviously. Now, give you credit. You know, it's weird. I'm, I always tell people about the you know, they always want to, like, people are like, what do you want to talk about? Oh, my God, you know, it's okay. Just come on. And we'll start talking always works really well. And now I know what you and I are going to talk about. And I feel like I'm not good at this. Oh, it's fine. Oh, no, I feel like I'm tripping over my thoughts and everything. Oh, really?
Anonymous Speaker 6:45
I'll just go for it. Just do it.
Scott Benner 6:47
So. But yeah, so you started when you're seven, you pretty much managing on your own? Or? I mean, you how involved were your family? How did that all work?
Anonymous Speaker 6:56
Yeah. So they were involved. Now this was back in the day when you were it was 45 carbs a meal 15 carbs, snacks, you had to eat a very specific times during the day. So it was, you know, drop everything and eat at noon at six o'clock, whatever it was, I don't remember. Um, so in the beginning, my parents helped quite a bit. When I hit I would say around 13. I was doing it primarily on my own. And at that point, I had switched over to lantis, which was a big deal. That was a big deal to switch from, I don't even remember, I think was humulin. And human beings evolve. And you had to mix them in the syringe prior to that, but then Lantus was a big deal, because you can eat whenever you want it. And then I was very hesitant to getting a pump for various reasons. But I didn't get one until college. But yeah, for them to answer your question. Yeah, I was pretty pretty on my own for most of it.
Scott Benner 7:56
Where was your outcomes during those like teen years and, and into college.
Unknown Speaker 8:03
So kind of rough.
Anonymous Speaker 8:05
I was I floated around the eights and nines. You know, and it was, and my parents, the other thought my other thought is my parents also really wanted it to be that way wanted me to be independent, so I could do whatever it was I wanted. So that was their thought process.
Unknown Speaker 8:24
But then,
Anonymous Speaker 8:26
you know, the then the other thing, the other curveball that got thrown out, again, was at around 15, I got diagnosed with graves disease, which caused crazy crazy insulin resistance. That took quite a few years to get regulated once. But once that got regulated, it really sorted out quite a bit. And then after that, I started the Omni pod. So I so I had like a big me in terms of a graph. Like a, like, a nice slope down to where I am now. From the time I was around like 20.
Scott Benner 8:57
I mean, when you said it took years to get regulated, you mean the graves disease? Yes. Okay. And what did that consist of?
Anonymous Speaker 9:05
So they started with, I can't even remember the name of it, but they started with the general medication. What is better beta blocker rings a bell, but don't quote me on that. They started with that. It was taking a really long time, though, to get my thyroid regulated, and so they ended up doing what's called radioactive thyroid ablation. So you go in, you take this big horse pill, and it basically like kills your thyroid completely. So now I take it since then that's helped tremendously but then I they had to regulate it with Synthroid which has been stable, but in the first couple years after taking it, it kind of would like blip and like, you know, I would need a lot of adjustments. So once I got stable that really helped
Scott Benner 9:59
me It took years. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It seems from my googling that beta blockers are used in conjunction with graves disease to help with heart palpitations and muscle tremors that come with graves.
Anonymous Speaker 10:12
Oh, just kidding. Alright, that was a different thing.
Scott Benner 10:14
Oh, yeah, that's
Anonymous Speaker 10:15
what was the name of the, I don't know, whatever. It's like the opposite isn't
Scott Benner 10:19
the opposite, isn't it? I should go out and see what happens.
Unknown Speaker 10:22
See what happens. I'm like, Oh, yes, I
Anonymous Speaker 10:25
was on the beta blocker because my heart rate was like through the roof at that time.
Unknown Speaker 10:30
Okay,
Unknown Speaker 10:30
due to the thyroid, hyper thyroid.
Scott Benner 10:36
livox. I don't know. I yeah, I'm not certain but but I do know like, if she you would sit with graves, you'd swing hyper and then hypo, like, you'd bounce back and forth or no.
Anonymous Speaker 10:47
So it's swung hyper. And then the point was to get it down. But then once they did the radioactive iodine exactly, would go down to hypo,
Scott Benner 10:58
with hyper and now Yes, probably managed with like Synthroid or something like that.
Anonymous Speaker 11:02
Yeah, I'm gonna be on Synthroid forever. Yeah, because of the ablation.
Scott Benner 11:06
Brandon, and that just not so they didn't remove your thyroid. They just kind of kicked it really hard. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Well, it was fun, the removal processes, it looks daunting. But that decision and everything else, so I don't know, like, would you go back and do it again? Or do you think you had no other choice?
Unknown Speaker 11:28
Um,
Anonymous Speaker 11:30
yeah, I think I would do it again, honestly, because I, the symptoms of graves disease were really awful. That was not fun. You know, I was my heart rate, I'd be sitting in class, I was in high school at the time, my heart rate would be like, 125 just sitting down. And I was an athlete. So that was quite a big problem. You know, and, and you're, you're hot. I would like not go out. I would go outside without a jacket in January. You know,
Unknown Speaker 11:57
like, it was? Yeah,
Anonymous Speaker 11:59
it was really not fun. So I think just getting rid of it faster. Which may be I'm just impatient, but getting rid of it faster was I think the right call. Okay.
Scott Benner 12:10
All right. Well, I don't know how to bury the lead anymore. Because I literally feel like I'm keeping a secret. It's making me upset. Which is ridiculous. Because you know, when people listen to a podcast, the title will indicate to them what this is about. So everyone's everyone's just like, Oh, my God, just get to it. And but you sent me a note, and, and you said you wanted to talk about some pretty specific stuff. So why don't you just tell me your story? And we'll pick through it? Sure, I don't.
Anonymous Speaker 12:42
Yeah, okay. All right. Okay, so um, yeah, so I don't even know. I wanted. I don't know, do I like say the topic? First? I'll go because the topics the name of the episode. Yeah, he doesn't know listening are going to be dying right now. Well, we'll do it. Okay. So yeah, so I sent you an email regarding how sexual assaults, and I ended up with PTSD from that. And really just how that pertains to diabetes, because it affected it quite a bit. Um, so I just, I guess I just go through the story, I
Scott Benner 13:21
guess. I mean, I am interested, I am definitely interested in how it impacted, like type one because you you were very specific, like this has an impact on my blood on my diabetes, and I was like, Oh, okay. Well, listen, you don't tell me any more than you're comfortable with. But I guess right around like, what you get to kind of tell me what age it was. And yeah, that kind of stuff.
Anonymous Speaker 13:40
Okay. Sure. So I yeah, I'll go into what we think makes sense. But, um, yeah, so I was a really classic, unfortunately, a case so I was a junior in college. I remember, it was a Sunday night of Labor Day weekend, and my friends wanted to go out. And we went to this 21 and under club, we were not 21 yet. Um, and essentially what happened was, you know, we're dancing on the dance floor and whatever. Someone came up to me, it was someone I knew. friend of a friend, not someone that I knew very personally. But I knew of him so it wasn't like a complete stranger. Right.
Unknown Speaker 14:31
And,
Anonymous Speaker 14:34
you know, so I can tell you the red flags that came up now, not realizing them at the time. And that's actually one of the reasons why I wanted to come on and talk about it because I think it's something that's not spoken about, and I think there's a ton of misconceptions. So with that being said, the first red flag that I noticed there was he somehow like got me away from my friends. You know, the group of you People that I was with.
Unknown Speaker 15:03
And you know what's funny?
Anonymous Speaker 15:06
It's so interesting. I actually feel like as I'm talking about this, I feel the need to justify that.
Unknown Speaker 15:15
Like, this is not
Anonymous Speaker 15:18
how do I explain this? It's like, it's like I feel the need to justify the fact that I'm not a person who does impulsive things, right? Like, I'm a very, like, cautious kind of person, pretty thoughtful like I you know, I don't do things very impulsively. And yet, I ended up kissing this guy on the dance floor. And what had happened was he kept asking me to go home with them. I said, No, I would say God, like four or five times. And that was the second red flag for me. I learned later on, if you're saying no to somebody, and they're not listening to you over and over again, that's, you know, that's an indicator, right? So, you know, to speed up the process here, I ended up going home with this person. And I'm not going to go into crazy detail by any means. But the second I got there, I knew I was not in control of the situation whatsoever. It was very different than anything I've ever experienced. And it was, you know, not great. So
Scott Benner 16:28
let me ask you a couple questions. Yeah. Was he older than you?
Unknown Speaker 16:33
Think the same about the same age? Same
Scott Benner 16:35
age? Yeah. When you said that. You said no, over and over again? What? What what? Give me he didn't drag you out. So what happened that you did it? Was it? Did you start to feel badly? Or did you feel pressured? Or what's that?
Anonymous Speaker 16:50
I think it was a combination of those two things. It's the strangest sensation. I almost felt like I had to say yes. After I said, No, so many times. It was. And that's the thing with this is that it's very subtle. It's very, like hard to describe that I've learned over the years. Yeah, I would say and I actually. And, you know, moving forward from that, like, I like I hold a ton of guilt from that from that, because it was that moment that I agreed, right, like to go with him. But I had to really separate Alright, and I've done this over the years. Just because I agreed to walk out the door with you doesn't mean that that's what I was asking for. Right? Like,
Scott Benner 17:38
two separate things. Does your does your anxiety from that come from the knowledge that you knew he wanted you to go? Like, have sex? Like there was clear, that's what he was trying to get you to do? I guess we're now or was it not? Oh,
Anonymous Speaker 17:58
I don't really know. It was. It was like this guilt that I put on myself that I felt like, I felt like I could have prevented it had had that. And sure, maybe I could have. But just because I think what I had to separate in my head was just because I left a building with you doesn't mean that that's what I was.
Scott Benner 18:18
Yeah, no, obviously. I mean, I think that's, that's obvious to you. And I and I'm assuming everyone listening, what I'm what I'm wondering is, is this? I mean, obviously there's a I don't understand the the depth of the illness that goes with doing this to somebody obviously, but this person's in, you know, intent on this. You would you would think from from the onset, like you said, polio pulled you away from people where you could pressure you privately, where you You said that you were not a person who like did things impulsively? Do you think you look like a target to him?
Unknown Speaker 18:53
Yes. 100%? Definitely.
Scott Benner 18:56
So you you, and not that you want to make sure I say this, right? Like, I don't mean that you are somehow at fault for being a target in his eyes. I'm just saying that he looked at a group of people and thought this looks like a girl. I can pressure. Yes. Okay.
Anonymous Speaker 19:13
Yeah. Yeah. Which, which I struggled with for a long time to write like, I kind of was like, What on earth? Was it about me that was targeted? Because it was very targeted? Right? Like, you know, that whole thing? Yeah, that's, that's something I had to really delve into to?
Scott Benner 19:31
Well, I mean, it should be said that you're a junior in college, he should be able to be the type of person who seems sweet and nice. You know what I mean? Like, you shouldn't have to walk out into the world looking like you're gonna slap anybody who looks at you, you know, and so but he just so that's got nothing to do. It's hard to put into words to somebody but that has nothing to do with you. Like if I was consoling you as a friend. I'd say you didn't do anything wrong. You just that time, nice person and And the bad thing that this person decided to do was probably in his mind easier to do to you than to somebody else. So why take the hard path to this? If this is what he was gonna try? Sure, yeah, that sucks. It's hard. I really feel badly, like listening to it. It's, it feels like I want to tell you, I'm sorry, every five seconds, but I stopped myself from doing that. You're fine. You're fine. And I also, you know, my son's about that age, you know, and, and D think about somebody taking advantage of him and or, or thinking of art and getting older. It's really frightening. So. So once you say you go along willingly. And then at some point, he pushes out to a line you're not okay with? I'm assuming you say no, again? Oh, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 20:50
Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah.
Scott Benner 20:52
So are you restrained at that point?
Anonymous Speaker 20:56
I couldn't tell you. I don't remember to be honest with you that I don't. I don't say more or less. Yes. Like, you know, this large man's on top of me. So I would say I would say yes, yeah.
Scott Benner 21:07
Were you impaired at all? Like, Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. Maybe you would have had trouble defending yourself?
Anonymous Speaker 21:13
Oh, for sure. There was no, there was nothing. You know, I tried like hell to get away. There was no way I was going to like, that was not happening. You know, I'm not a very big person either. Like, so there was no, yeah.
Scott Benner 21:26
So then what happens? I mean, as I'm thinking about, like, I can't fathom any of this. So like, when, when the act is over? Does he just let you leave?
Anonymous Speaker 21:40
Yeah, isn't that strange? I thought the same that that's something that really runs through my head, too. I remember. So to to give context, though. I actually completely blacked out during it. I remembered the beginning of it. I remember, totally blacked out during the middle. It took me years to actually remember, like, what actually had happened. And I remember distinctly saying, getting up and saying, this is a terrible idea. That's what I said. And I left. And I actually didn't remember what had already happened. It was like, it was like, someone paused my brain and then turned it back on, like, 20 minutes later, or however long it was, I couldn't tell you. Um, yeah, so that was definitely that. That was weird.
Scott Benner 22:33
Okay, can I ask you with yours to obviously think about this, and probably I'm imagining look into it from a lot of different angles. Is that common?
Anonymous Speaker 22:42
Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. It's, um, I can't think of the word is, like, repressing it right? Yeah, it's Yeah. You just like, and it wasn't. Yeah, cuz I went through, like, those are two different things, like between repressing and denying. I just straight up had no idea it had happened, um, for a while for a long time.
Scott Benner 23:07
So you, did you leave there? Did you physically know that you had, that? There was intercourse? Like, do you know what I mean?
Anonymous Speaker 23:17
No, no, I had no idea. I had no idea. I was really I was in a lot of pain afterwards. And I was like, That's weird. Like, that was my thought. Like, I was like, oh,
Unknown Speaker 23:27
let's train your
Scott Benner 23:27
brain. Just not to think about it. Probably no, right? Yep. I just like, because that mean, the reason I asked is I tried to put myself in your possession as best I can to try to work my way through the questions. And I would imagine that if that was happening to me, I'd think well, when this is over, someone's going to kill me because you wouldn't do this to me, and then let me go tell somebody about it. You know, but I guess that's not
Anonymous Speaker 23:53
I totally know what you mean. And I was so like, it was like an out of body experience. Like I was so like, blacked out is the best word that I have that like, I wouldn't have thought that lat like nothing. There was no logic going on in that moment, because I was just so just like, you know, so dramatize that. Yeah, like you couldn't think that I couldn't think that clear.
Scott Benner 24:16
Not that you don't even think it but like, I'm putting myself in the attackers like it would be it would be like robbing a bank without a mask on and someone seeing you and you'd be like, Well, I have to kill you now. Because you've seen me do this. Like, like, it would just like, if someone was robbing a bank, and I was looking into a face and they were holding a gun. I think this guy's gonna shoot me. Like, like, I mean, it's just, it's like, it's kind of fascinating. It is.
Anonymous Speaker 24:42
Yeah. And it's horrifying. Because like, that's the thing. It's his word against mine, right? Like that's, they're the only two people there. I do think actually, when I walked out I'm pretty sure his roommates heard the whole thing, because they looked to me very horrified as I walked out. So I think they probably heard but I, you know, that's that's the scary thing about this and that's what's so, you know, what makes it so hard to talk about is that like, it's it's literally two people that are there right like it's it's Yeah.
Scott Benner 25:18
What what? What happens in the in the days after was when you see the roommates or do you see any of those people?
Unknown Speaker 25:26
So, like the people involved?
Scott Benner 25:29
I mean yeah, I mean, like my own room Do you see the attacker again?
Unknown Speaker 25:33
Oh my god yeah,
Anonymous Speaker 25:34
he lived in the same building is me. So that was I gotta say I think that was the worst part of all this was that like I oh my god it was horrible like I I was afraid to go. They had like laundry in the basement. I was terrified to go do my laundry.
Unknown Speaker 25:53
Yeah, that was horrible.
Scott Benner 25:54
Terrified, like, but are you still repressing it? Like how long until you realize you were raped?
Anonymous Speaker 26:01
Oh, I'm so Alright, good question. So it was
Unknown Speaker 26:07
I would say a solid.
Anonymous Speaker 26:10
Six months or so before I realized that I was just that was bad, right like that. I was like, okay, something had happened there. It was then I think I think I wrote it all down. But now I don't know what I said. But I think it was like three, four years later before I realized the whole full extent of the of it.
Scott Benner 26:33
Yeah. So you just have this overwhelming feeling of dread being around him or building or those sorts of things?
Anonymous Speaker 26:39
Yeah, I had, like, I had really strange dreams were like about it. And I was like, That's weird. I don't think that happened. And then started remembering it more and more like as time went on. Oh, that's
Scott Benner 26:53
somehow that makes it more horrible. And yeah, right. Yeah. You don't hear some fun. You don't hear a story like that. And then think, Oh, you know, it'll probably get worse in a second. But then there, there it was. It got worse very quickly. Exactly. Wow. I am at the party again, where I feel like I should say, I'm so sorry to hear this. Oh, it's really, it's, I've got the weirdest job is what I'm thinking at the moment. So I'm okay, so all this happens. You have this frame of time afterwards, where you just it everything in the world feels scary and wrong, for no reason. It takes you to you're out of college to figure it out. Once you figure it out. Do you do anything? Like is there something to do?
Anonymous Speaker 27:36
So yeah, so I realized, just so in this time, so that was in like, it was in September. That same year about I don't know that spring, I started dating somebody. And I started as we were like, I don't know, what is a good word for that. Oh, this is after dark. I could just say, right? I gotta say whatever. As we're hooking up, right? I start, like having these weird reactions like really strange. Like, I was like, in tears afterwards. And I'm like, What on earth is this? And so that's when I actually started remembering part of it. So what I did to answer your question, so that was awful. Months later, I was like, Alright, I guess I got to go to therapy, because I was like, I don't know what on earth is going on here. Um, and so that was incredibly helpful and did that over a number of years.
Scott Benner 28:39
So you see, you took care of yourself, you went for therapy, and, and, and so you think that having a real boyfriend and getting into intimate situations is what drew out your memories of it? Yeah, definitely. Okay. Jc go to therapy that makes sense. Do you do anything like about the attacker? Like what is like, what's the feeling there? Like, you must have like a question in your head, like, do I call the cops? Has it been too long? What do I do? What am I interested in that fight? Like?
Anonymous Speaker 29:13
Yeah, um, it didn't even really occur to me until like, months and months later, and nothing. I didn't have any I had nothing to go off of like, what do you what do you say to the cops like, Oh, hey, this happened six months ago. Like, right? He's going to tell you no, I'm going to tell you yes. And so I didn't I never pursued anything with that. You know, and I didn't even remember the whole full extent of it until like I said, years later, so like, at that point, what do you even do? I did the one. It did cross my mind. My fear is that he's out this person is out doing this to other people, right like that. really got me I stuck with me for a really long time. But I really thought about it and I was like, but even if I were to pursue anything like nothing is going to come of it whatsoever. It's years later, and so yeah, no, I never actually pursued anything with that.
Scott Benner 30:19
I don't know that I could. I can't I can't like find fault with any of those thoughts. You don't need me. Yeah. Like, I'm taking your point like, Hey, you did this all this time I go. No, I didn't. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 30:31
okay. Yeah, that's it. Right. Like, there's
Anonymous Speaker 30:33
nothing Meanwhile, and, you know, meanwhile, it's, it's killing me, right. Like, it's awful. But so like, Did I really need to, like recount it to this person? And then have them deny it? Like, no. So
Scott Benner 30:48
that's that wasn't gonna protect anybody. Right? Yeah. And what about the roommates? Did you? Yeah, that's, I mean, I don't even know. Like, it's, it's so it's so disheartening that you could find one person willing to do this. And then when you realize there are more that are willing to stand by like, and not even just check on you, as you're going out the door. You know what I mean? Like is fascinatingly frightening?
Anonymous Speaker 31:13
Yeah, the, um, I don't know, I don't really remember who they were. But I remember like walking out and being like, why did they look so freaked out? And then I walked out the door. And yeah, no, nothing, nothing came of that. My own roommate I actually didn't mention my, my one roommate, who I've been friends with for a very long time. tried to stop the whole thing from happening in the beginning. Ironically, and that was the other actually forgot this. That was the other like, real source of guilt that I had that she tried. Like, she really tried. Like, she was talking to me. And she was like, What are you doing? Like, no, let's not do that. Um, and I don't know, I need to talk to I should have talked to her about it before I came on here. I don't know why. I don't know what set her off that she thought. Like, what made her do that?
Scott Benner 32:05
Yeah. But she saw something was wrong.
Anonymous Speaker 32:08
She saw Yeah, she knew something was wrong. And I persisted. Yeah, I get I'm, I'm a stubborn human being, and especially if I've had a drink, very stubborn openness about myself. And I was like, No, no, don't tell me what to do. Like. I know very nice. Like, don't get me wrong.
Unknown Speaker 32:26
But I can get like that.
Anonymous Speaker 32:27
Um, but yeah, so that was my reaction to it. But they when I got back to my own apartment, they I told them about a little bit. I was like, yeah, I'm like, That really hurt. And they were like, what? And I was like, No, it's fine. And, you know, they kind of dropped it. And what,
Scott Benner 32:49
what really hurt I'm sorry, I lost you. Like, I
Anonymous Speaker 32:51
was just so like, from the whole incident was very, yeah. So I was very sore. And they were like, yeah, and they were they they knew something had happened.
Scott Benner 33:05
But it never really got spoken about.
Anonymous Speaker 33:09
No, I did speak to them about it much later.
Scott Benner 33:13
Yeah. But in that moment, I guess you're really just like a bunch of 20 year olds, right. Like, isn't that Yeah, you know, just a bunch of kids that are like, we're gonna go dancing and drink a little bit, and then a real life situation pops up. And who knows how to handle any of that? You know?
Anonymous Speaker 33:28
No, it's so true. That is so incredibly true. I think, you know, Dave, and I have like, really like, to this day, like, they're, they're great friends of mine. And they are we actually talked about it later on. And they're like, one of them was like, I'm so sorry. Like, we didn't do enough. And I'm like, you're 20 years old? Like,
Unknown Speaker 33:49
what are you gonna do? Right? Like, it's,
Anonymous Speaker 33:51
you know, it's, it's so shocking for a given break. We're talking about it. And it's and it's like, a shocking things to talk about and hard to talk about. And when you're 20. Like, oh, Mike, forget it,
Unknown Speaker 34:03
you don't know what you don't
Scott Benner 34:05
know, I'm thrown by the idea that in this story, there are so many people, even down to you and I talking about it now, who all would have done the right thing in a scenario like that, and one person with bad intentions and that's what wins the day. Like, I know he gets his way for having those bad intentions around. You know, like that. It's just it's, it's um, I can't I can't wrap my head around it like I've tried while you're talking to just put myself in his shoes for a second and be like, Why would you do this? Like because like, Mike, because I come up with all these weird things like you did talk to him. Like, right. And so you must have had some thought that oh, this is a reasonably attractive person. I'll speak to him for a minute and find out what's going on here. Like he could have just put in real effort with you and create a relationship with you but but that's not his intention. Like, it's so it has nothing to do with any of that, quite obviously, I'm probably saying something that's completely obvious, but he really is just intent on on the act of hurting you or somebody else and getting to it very quickly and being done with it.
Anonymous Speaker 35:15
Right. And that's, and it's not like it's not sex. It's not a relationship. It's not any of those things. It's, it's, it's like violin, you know, like, it's like, two completely polarizing things. But yeah, that's, yeah, it's I don't know, I don't know what would wrap your like, you know,
Unknown Speaker 35:35
I'm not gonna get around that.
Scott Benner 35:36
I'm not gonna find it. I just know that. Yeah, there's more context. Like, you know, I've heard people my whole life say, they have sexual assaults, not about sex. And I understand academically exactly what they mean. Like, there's no confusion with me, but hearing your story makes it more real to me that idea. Yeah. And that's just terrible. So, alright, well, let's get out of this part. I seriously before I have a stroke, and, and, and I'm like, sitting here like, my, I don't look like this. Usually, when I do the show, my hands are up. My shoulders are tight, like up against my neck. I feel like I'm, you know, like, I feel like I want to just say to you, hey, this was a bad idea. We shouldn't talk about good, better than I am is the point. I'm gonna need your number for your therapist. By the time we're finished. Oh, well, she's good. Well, so. So then, after stuff like this happens, yeah, the PTSD around being around the building. But then about being around men, I would imagine. What about what about the Did you tell your parents?
Okay, I'm going to use this spot here where the advertisements usually go just to give us all a break for a second. Take a deep breath and go over how you can get help. Again, it's rainn.org are a i n n dot o RG you can contact them right there on that website. Even chat with somebody or call 1-800-656-4673 they say that every 73 seconds an American is sexually assaulted. on the site, you can find out warning signs for child sexual abuse, make a donation to them. And much more. Rain stands for Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. It is the nation's largest anti sexual violence organization rain created and operates the National Sexual Assault hotline in partnership with more than 1000 local sexual assault service providers across the country and operates the D o t safe helpline for the Department of Defense. Rain also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence help survivors and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice rainn.org or a i n n dot o RG, please if you need them reach out. Do you tell your parents? Oh,
Anonymous Speaker 38:44
yeah, that's a whole other can of worms. But um, I did. My parents. I don't think they had the capacity to do much about it. I think my parents are, how do I even explain explain this?
Unknown Speaker 39:04
You know,
Unknown Speaker 39:07
a bit there. That's not their thing.
Unknown Speaker 39:10
And I put it that way. That's not their thing. That's not
Scott Benner 39:12
their thing. Well, let me let me say something because I think you maybe want to say that I'm wrong. I have to say this. I'm not your dad. And this is 20 years from now. And I'm struggling to say the right thing because there's it every step of the you can see why people say the wrong things around this because every step of this there's a part of your brain that wants to go Why didn't you just push him and run away in the bar? Right? Why didn't and I'm imagining that in your parents desperation for this not to be something that actually happened to you. They probably said every wrong thing along the way getting to it.
Anonymous Speaker 39:51
You know, they weren't horrible. It was just the and I yeah, it was just I think I'm So much. It was so much I think there's not much. There's not much to do. Like,
Scott Benner 40:05
what happened? Yeah, yeah. Didn't like, Did your dad ask who the person was?
Anonymous Speaker 40:12
I actually never only talked to my mom about it. I never talked to my dad about it. Um, she? No, I
Unknown Speaker 40:18
don't think she
Anonymous Speaker 40:19
did. I think I recall her asking if I told the police. You know, she, you know, and she tried it a couple times. And you know, then that was kind of it. But I think not being able to wrap her head around that this was like a long term thing to get over. I think is the like, disconnect there.
Scott Benner 40:42
I honestly am a fairly reasonable person. And I'm trying to imagine if I could stop myself from finding that person and killing them. Oh, yeah. Like, I don't know if I could stop myself or not. You know,
Unknown Speaker 40:55
it's funny. People say that a lot.
Unknown Speaker 40:59
It wouldn't even do anything.
Scott Benner 41:01
No, I know, it would be the wrong thing to do. I'm not saying that. I'm trying to decide. I don't even know if it wouldn't hurt you more. I'm just trying to say that I I'm looking for the capacity inside of myself. Not the snap. If he's hoping this
Anonymous Speaker 41:14
Oh, yeah. I can't imagine I can't imagine like my own I know of kids. But one day if I have kids, if my kid told me that like, Oh my god, like Yeah, no, I seriously.
Scott Benner 41:24
Yeah. When my son was eight, a little kid talk to him. And I thought I was gonna kill that kid. You're gonna I gave him like a Death Stare. And I was like, listen to me. And I just said something very quietly under my breath to him. I was like, you're gonna stop that right now my little friend turned into a mafia don, like with like a little kid. I'm assuming this would be worse. And I at this point, now, I'm not lying to you. Now my left arm is stiff. And I'm having I'm having shoulder pain. I think I'm just I am so upset about what happened to you that I'm like, I'm turning myself into a knot. Like, it's, I go through this. Every after dark episode ends with me walking out of this room, like out like fanning my face. And like, spritzing myself with water. It's, it's incredibly valuable to hear these stories. And it's hard to be the person that asked the questions about them. Because it's, I think if you just started talking, and I was listening, I'd say, uh huh, uh huh. Oh, I'm sorry. That's horrible. Like, it would go on like that forever. Right. But because I'm trying to listen along and ask you questions to understand better. I just feel too involved that and all of a sudden, so Well,
Unknown Speaker 42:40
you're, you're doing great. Don't
Unknown Speaker 42:43
get me feel better scenarios. No, I
Anonymous Speaker 42:45
do know, like, legitimately, no. And I really, you know, I appreciate it. Because I think it's, like I keep saying like, it's something that's so unfortunately, so common, and yet it's so not spoken about whatsoever. Actually, when when it happened. I my go to, like coping mechanism is like researching things I like to know. I'm like, Okay, well, what can I learn about this? Right? There's nothing there's like borderline nothing out there. I mean, there's some stuff right. But um, you know, that's one of the reasons why I really wanted to talk about it, because there's not much out there. So, point being, you're doing great.
Scott Benner 43:23
Well, thank you. I just saw I just googled the words rate of sexual when you get to that point. Yeah, it comes up assault, assault on college campuses, assault in prison, something else? How common is sexual assault in college 2019 Associates of America University survey on sexual assault and misconduct polled over 50 150,000 students at 27 universities and data revealed that there's a 13% non consensual sexual conduct.
Anonymous Speaker 43:52
And that's, and that's probably not even collecting the whole thing. Like I never reported this to anybody. Right. Right. Like and I think I would assume most people don't. The vast majority. So yeah, it's, it's, it's really, unfortunately, common.
Unknown Speaker 44:09
It really is. And,
Unknown Speaker 44:10
and,
Anonymous Speaker 44:11
you know, the things that I think what makes it so hard to talk about is the things that you're met with are so horrible, like the things that people say, you know, I had, I even had I didn't mention, I, the first therapist, I went to straight up told me, granted, before I tell you what she told me, I skimmed over a large portion of the story, right. But I lead with that I had been assaulted. And she said,
Unknown Speaker 44:42
Yeah,
Anonymous Speaker 44:43
I don't really think that that was that bad. I'm not even kidding. Right? And how had a very the car conversation was very focused on while you were drinking, right? So you get met with these things. And please don't take that as a like, you know, A negative of therapy therapy's been fantastic that one person sucked. But since then it's been fantastic. But, you know, so you're met with these. That's what you're met with a lot of the time when you do try to talk about it or try to, like, find things about it. You know, it's it's people
Scott Benner 45:17
looking for ways to stop it from happening in their mind. And so they ask you questions that are incredibly insulting and hurtful.
Anonymous Speaker 45:26
Yeah. And it's and it's people. Yeah, it's people coping, they're trying to they're trying to make sure well, if I don't do that, it'll never happen to me, or it'll never happen to my kid or whatever. Right? Um, you know, but that's
Scott Benner 45:37
definitely I don't think it needs to be said that just because your neighbor created doesn't mean you've given up your rights. Like, that's not how the world works. And it just, it seems like, I mean, it's it, that's a pretty heavy prevalence on a college campus. So I'm assuming what you do is you take, you take boys, at this very certain age, when they are just overwhelmed with, you know, hormones and craziness. And this ability to be, you know, to be drinking for the first time or doing drugs for the first time or all this stuff. And then you mix it with the fact that a certain percentage of the population are criminal assholes. And now, like, you know, all the other boys find a way to handle it. You know what I mean? Like, everyone else knows how to hear no, and stop themselves. And this person's not even worried about that. They that that wasn't even their concern. Their concern was, I'm going to do this terrible thing. And, you know, we don't, I don't know the person, you don't know the person, if it was for what the reasons were, but none of the reasons are obviously, okay. But but it's just the point of made me feel like I made I was making the point to somebody This is years ago. Why is it? Why is this happening? This has to anyway, hold on a second? Oh, I have to take this. This is gonna be really weird. Hold on a second. Okay. Hello.
Word, I'm going to say I'm sorry that I don't usually have to stop in the middle like that. But that was, I appreciate that. Okay, so. So I think we've pretty much well established, there are terrible people in the world, and they're really well, and they're really lovely people in the world. And that, for some reason, when terrible things happen, we seem to turn to the lovely people and ask them how they got to that situation.
Unknown Speaker 47:28
So true,
Scott Benner 47:28
really crazy. Like no one goes and finds the bad guy and goes, Hey, how come you're an ass? You know, like, why are you or why you're a terrible criminal. The end and have no like concern for people like what is wrong with you? We just go to you when we go. Should you have been drinking? Really?
Unknown Speaker 47:44
Right. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 47:45
yeah, you know,
Anonymous Speaker 47:46
that's very true. I like that one. I'm gonna use that. Talk to my students.
Scott Benner 47:49
It's really it's ridiculous. And but, but you know why it helps or why that why it happens, excuse me, is because those people are busy hiding somewhere. Right? You're, you're you're the one that's standing up and going, Hey, this is me. Let's talk about what's going on. They're the one who's hiding and pretending that they're that they're not,
Unknown Speaker 48:07
they don't exist.
Scott Benner 48:08
So right, yeah. So they're just trying to pretend they're not doing that. And, and I have to tell you that if I'm sure someone else has tried to absolve you already, but you can't be responsible for someone else's bad behavior. Like, you don't I mean, that's just, I see what you're saying. But I don't even know what you would do. Like, what would you do now? You don't I mean, like, even if you got it into you right now, as an adult, 20 years later, you're saying, what are we six, seven years past that? Seven? Yeah. What are you gonna do?
Anonymous Speaker 48:39
Right, exactly. And, you know, and also thinking of myself as at that age, like, you're 20 years old, you don't know what you're doing.
Unknown Speaker 48:48
Right? Like,
Unknown Speaker 48:48
I don't know, I don't even know I was half a person at that point.
Scott Benner 48:51
Do you ever wonder if you approach that person right now and said to them, You did this to me? Do you ever wonder if they would think that they did?
Anonymous Speaker 49:01
I have wondered that. I can't imagine what the response would be to be perfectly honest. Yeah. I don't know.
Scott Benner 49:07
Like, if you had a truth serum, and they answered, would they just be like, yes, I did that I'm a massive.
Anonymous Speaker 49:12
I wonder. No, I honestly, I think it would just deny till the grave. I really do think that I don't I mean, I don't know. Right. Like I never confronted about it or anything.
Scott Benner 49:23
No, it was he was he altered to I couldn't tell you. I don't know if he didn't know. Yeah,
Anonymous Speaker 49:28
I find personally I men I find hard to tell if they're drunk or not.
Unknown Speaker 49:34
I don't know why I just really do and personally might be because we're sort of asked to begin with it's hard.
Unknown Speaker 49:38
It could be it
Anonymous Speaker 49:42
could be Um, oh, but then I could go into like how this affected diabetes.
Scott Benner 49:48
That's exactly what the rest of this is about. So good. Okay, so we'll
Anonymous Speaker 49:51
get off the horrible horrible train here. Um, it doesn't get much but no kidding.
Scott Benner 49:57
Can you imagine? It was pretty much a downfall after that. Scott,
Unknown Speaker 50:01
life still sucks.
Unknown Speaker 50:03
Um,
Anonymous Speaker 50:04
but yeah, so, so from there. Yeah, I mean, I was, you know, it's funny. It's like, it's like, you know those diabetes burnout. I was just burnt out of life like me like I don't that's not funny but like, but I really was like it was just like, you know, coping with that was just crazy. And then trying to do diabetes, I would just, you know, I didn't have a CGM at that point. So at that point, I'm on Omni pod and you know, regular checking your blood sugar, and I'd be like, Oh, am I okay? take insulin. Oh, okay. Like just this very, very cloudy. Yeah, cloudy, like very district like, like, okay, going through the motions kind of thing. And I made adjustments and everything. But it was just, oh, yeah, diabetes, a thing that happened
Scott Benner 50:55
five times a day. So that PTSD that just hangs over you. 24 seven that
Anonymous Speaker 51:00
oh, my God, it was awful. Yeah, that was, so what happens, I learned later, you're basically in that fight or flight mode all the time. Like, all the time, your, you know, your nervous system is jacked up. And so everything skipped like, like, the door would open I jumped out of my skin, like just it was, you know, just like you're constantly like, need to be running away from something, you know. And so, how that impacted my blood sugar's was crazy, right? Like, you know, you've talked about like adrenaline with with basketball games, it was like constant though, like 24 hours a day. So I do remember, my insulin needs going up quite a bit afterward, like at like, I would say, I don't know, months afterwards. And then when we get me was I started having like, actual panic attacks. Specifically surrounding surrounding sex would have, so that's great. So that was really fun. Like, oh, let's have sex. Oh, just kidding. We're having a panic attack instead, like that was really beautiful. Um, but so that would drive up either if it depended on the day, it would either drive my blood sugar up or crash. And so that was fantastic to work with. But basically, so this went on for a couple of years. And then I finally I don't know, three, four years later, my therapist strongly recommended that I tried eating anxiety medication, which I was like, which I finally agreed to, and best decision I ever made, like Honest to God, it was night and day. I was like, Oh, this is how normal people feel. And my insulin needs went down my I stopped having these like, really funky like, rises in my blood sugar. Yeah, so that really helped tremendously.
Scott Benner 53:10
Can I ask when you're trying to be intimate with another person, then you have a panic attack in that situation? How much of that you how much of the reason why do you tell them?
Unknown Speaker 53:19
I'm so
Anonymous Speaker 53:23
I'm. So the guy I was dating at the time. It was a that that relationship was interesting. So I mean, I was finding this out as I was dating him. So that was just a very strange dynamic. Yeah, I consider eventually tell him about it. But I hadn't remember the whole thing. So I was confused about it. So that was tough. We eventually that that relationship was a dumpster fires
Unknown Speaker 53:56
eventually broke up. This
Scott Benner 53:57
is not the bedrock that a solid relationship. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 54:00
yeah. No,
Unknown Speaker 54:01
the world is
Anonymous Speaker 54:02
happier that we broke up, like the world told me,
Unknown Speaker 54:05
you know, but
Anonymous Speaker 54:08
the guy I'm dating now to answer your question, um, I told him pretty early on. And it went beautifully. Like it is. He's been absolutely fantastic about it. Granted, it only happens like very few and far between nowadays. But yeah, so I so I told him about it. And I said, like, hey, this might happen, FYI. So that was fun starting a relationship where I was like, Oh, so you know, I were an insulin pump. And also, I might panic while we have sex, like it's fine.
Unknown Speaker 54:45
You might peel me off the ceiling at some point.
Unknown Speaker 54:48
Yeah. Like it's a treat to date.
Scott Benner 54:50
Like, it'll be great to treat the date me. If you ever seen a cat trade? This is what I'm gonna look like on the top of the bed. Just so you understand. Right? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 54:58
that's pretty much what it's like not gonna lie. Yeah,
Scott Benner 55:01
I'm just imagining it must be a physical reaction. You must recoil, right?
Anonymous Speaker 55:05
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it, that's how it stopped. Like, with my, my, the guy I'm currently dating, um, it started that way it was, whoop, get out of here, like run out the door, right? And it's slowly became like, easier to just like, not take off and just like kind of get through it and come back. And
Scott Benner 55:29
yeah. Does it help you to talk about this in such a normal way because it occurs to me while we're talking. Like, I like the thing that I thought to make a joke just now. And I stopped myself I was like, I thought to myself, like, you imagine, like, you're just like, hanging out, and then all of a sudden, you're just barasch running out of the room, like, you know, like, on the way here going the other way. And then I'm like, No, that's the wrong thing to say in this situation.
Anonymous Speaker 55:54
It's fine. Now, like, if you said that to me, like
Unknown Speaker 55:57
five years ago.
Anonymous Speaker 56:01
But no, like, I mean, I've, I've, it's so at this point. It's so few and far between, there's like a few things that still get me. And so No, it's fine. I think you'll get through those inappropriate jokes.
Scott Benner 56:16
I just didn't want to, but the end of my thought was, is that at some point, someone needs to treat you like a normal person. Right and not and not tiptoe around you, or you're never going to be able to get past them. Do you think there is getting past the rest of it?
Anonymous Speaker 56:29
Oh, yeah. 100%? Absolutely. Especially being in such like, I'm in such a good. Like, I'm just in a good place right now. My relationships. Great. I feel, you know, 100% supported with it. And so yeah, definitely, I think the last little lingering bit. Yeah, I think it'll, it'll go away at some point.
Scott Benner 56:52
Well, are you still working with a therapist?
Anonymous Speaker 56:54
Yeah, yeah. I tell her that. I mean, I have to see her until either she dies or I die. So hopefully she's in it
Scott Benner 57:02
for the we're not getting out of this. You know, we're going out together. Exactly. No, I think that's obviously a valuable idea. And the guy and I mean, how much of it just being a good guy also helps to although credit to the other one. Somebody had to be first. And at least, at least he wasn't somebody that you like, head over heels loved. But you couldn't get through this part with like, at least it was a disposable relationship to begin with. And you got you don't mean like you got something that you really did, you got to move forward from it. So
Unknown Speaker 57:34
if you're looking for a positive data, you know, this is not how relationships are supposed to go.
Scott Benner 57:40
Yes. But I'm saying at least you That was the kind of guy you got on that one. While you were busy figuring out what happened to you imagine if you would have met this nice guy right now. And not been able to like, stick around to
Unknown Speaker 57:54
see how it went. You know what I mean? So Right, right. No, that's very true.
Scott Benner 57:57
Yeah. So he was valuable in that sense. So you had these incredible, like, spikes of like consistent blood sugar problems, the anxiety, anxiety medication took that away for you, which is amazing. And I think anyone listening who has anxiety should be hearing that and paying attention. Because if you're, you know, like, when in the course of the conversations, the podcast, you talked about things like, you know, adrenaline from sports, or activity or something like that, or have been people have talked about, like, blood sugar spiking or dropping during sex and stuff like that, like times when your body you know, goes into these different modes. But if you're in that mode, 20 473 65 Yeah, like, that's just terrible. You must just physically feel better now to write
Anonymous Speaker 58:43
Oh, my God. Yeah, I feel like I can breathe. Like I just, that's the best way I could describe it. Like, it was just like, the world was just very terrifying to me. Like, everything freaked me out, right. Like, it's, it's just night and day, and I feel like, right, and I feel like myself again, because I wasn't. I mean, I was always an anxious person, but not like that. Like that was a little
Scott Benner 59:03
Yeah, you lost. You lost in real time in your life. Right. So you lost time. Like there's just wasted time in these? Oh, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 59:12
Oh, yeah. 100%
Scott Benner 59:14
Oh, yeah. Well, you're just existing and staying alive. And yeah. Yeah, that sucks. It really does. I mean, I would imagine beyond the emotional stress, there's got to be actual physical tension to
Anonymous Speaker 59:28
Oh, my God. Yeah. My I finally, like, my shoulders are always like, total knots. And in this past year, they finally chilled out.
Unknown Speaker 59:39
It's like, they feel like extra shoulders again.
Scott Benner 59:42
That's, that's nice. I mean, it's nice. Because we, you know, we said at the beginning, you're in your late 20s. But you're not. No, no. You're right there. But yeah, but I mean, trying to highside this. Yeah, you did get through the worst of it. It seems like in relative short order. I mean, it's doesn't feel like short order because it's your life and you lost yours. But when you stand back 75 years old and look at this, you'll think, oh, there were a couple years in my 20s, where this was a real problem, but I got through it, and I just kept moving forward from there. You know, yeah.
Anonymous Speaker 1:00:16
And I, you know, it did some, I mean, I certainly I would rather that not have happened, but, you know, it did. It helped me realize I wanted to become a counselor, first off, just going through therapy, I was like, Oh, this is cool. You know, and, and I think it just gave me such a greater empathy. For other people, like, you know, this, I was 20, right. And this happens to kids. And unfortunately, we don't need to go down that path. But, you know, it happens to like, you know, very traumatic things happen. So lots of people. So I think it just gave me, you know, such greater empathy for other people and, and not to mention, like better understanding of like, when you're going through something very traumatic, like, what it's like to try to come out of it. So, you know, it, it did give me a lot to work with. It gave me a lot of like, clarity on what I wanted to do. So, some good definitely came out of it, for sure. Well,
Scott Benner 1:01:21
I mean, that's nice. I feel weird saying that. anything good?
Anonymous Speaker 1:01:26
No, I know. And that's what I said to do. I was like, I was like, I don't want to say like, yeah, it was fun.
Scott Benner 1:01:30
Yeah, thank God, this happened. I never would have had this perspective. But yeah, I you probably can't just live without the perspective. moving in a bubble, right, gained it slowly over time, the way everyone else gets it, you know? Exactly. But But I mean, what it made me think of when you were just talking is that, you know, everybody my age knows, the kids start coming home from college like you, your, your, your children, your children's friends, they come home, just imagine that every time. You know, you ask 10 girls how school going? It's possible that 13% of them have, like, been through an assault. Yeah, like, That's insane. It's crazy. You know what I mean? More than one in 10 people can say, oh, that something like this has happened to me. And, you know, you're sending your, you know, your daughters are heading off to college. And this just can't be I mean, we could go down the roads, how? And, you know, of course, people should, you know, people need to, like, evaluate their sons better. You don't I mean, like, you all know, your kids like, quirky, like getting weird or like, you know, by himself, like, say something like, send them the therapy before. Something like this happens, you know, like, don't just stick your head in the sand when you notice your kids a malcontent. Like seriously, I mean, I know you're not a parent, you're kind of younger, but everyone knows I'm not saying you know, somebody is going to assault somebody, but you can tell when your kids a little weird, like, do something for them. Don't just let them go out into the world. I'll twist it up like that. Yeah, a mess. Do something because they're gonna go meet somebody else. They're gonna meet somebody's daughter and somebody's son, and you know, and, and have these monstrous ideas in their heads. And you know, Jesus Christ, like, Fuck, do something. Don't just look at him and go, Oh, he just likes knives. Yeah, I don't know what that mean.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:26
He just like,
Scott Benner 1:03:27
figure it out. You know, figure it out. I know, Joe, he doesn't need a 13th tarantula in his in his cage. Like, I don't know what it is like, when you see something? That seems like a little off go. Let me find out here.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:41
What's going on here? Exactly. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. Maybe Maybe it is alter Angeles. Who knows?
Scott Benner 1:03:47
I don't know why. I'm just saying when something seems wrong. They say something you don't I mean, do something. Don't just sit there and hope it gets better. People do that with their health they do with all kinds of things. They're like, Oh, I noticed that six months ago. Why didn't you do anything? I don't mean I don't understand. Like, yeah, yeah.
Anonymous Speaker 1:04:06
And I think, you know, it's just being in debt and, and not a fault counselor. But like, you know, like, being a school, like having a background in school counseling, I think, you know, I think that's the importance of, of counseling, like to begin with personally like, and I mean, I know, I'm super biased in that sense, but, you know, it's so that when you're, you're reaching those kids when they're kids, hopefully, right, like so that you're not becoming this monster, right. I don't know. So Well, I think it goes I think goes both ways, if that makes sense.
Scott Benner 1:04:43
It does. And also there are people who have thought that they haven't acted on yet. I mean, I don't know how difficult this is to say but like, ask for help. Like, tell somebody like I'm having thoughts that I believe are not okay. You know, like, I need to talk to somebody about it. And right, exactly, just because you're not going to win when there's a problem like that inside, you're not going to keep it down forever. And you know, and if you're hearing this now and you're feeling that way, like you could stop yourself before you're hurt somebody, you know, it's a it's a big deal to try to take responsibility even when things feel out of control. It's sometimes it's the first step to finding control.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:24
I don't know absolutely. No, no, you're right. Yeah.
Scott Benner 1:05:27
I know. It's Friday. You got me. You got me. I don't know what to do. Now. I just.
Anonymous Speaker 1:05:37
Yeah, true. Okay. Well, I don't know sometimes, like, cut off. Like, I don't know, it's like a different land.
Scott Benner 1:05:46
Do you ever notice rain sometimes can't cross a body of water? Yeah. Right. Ever see that? Like you drive over a bridge. It's raining on one side. And on the other side?
Unknown Speaker 1:05:55
I love him. That happens. Pretty cool.
Scott Benner 1:05:57
Anyway, Alright, so what are we not telling people that we should be telling them at this point, like, so? Obviously, stress and anxiety can come from a lot of different things, but directly from PTSD, it's gonna have a massive impact on your blood sugars. You know, you you endured something terrible, that kind of put you into a fog for a long time. So I'm assuming your blood sugars weren't all that important to you, like you said, you just like give yourself some insulin and move along. Yeah. And that was it. What do you do? Like, what do you see as you're moving forward? What are your short term goals, I guess for yourself
Anonymous Speaker 1:06:39
in terms of diabetes, or just in general, I
Scott Benner 1:06:41
think in terms of like, getting you to a place where you're where this feels like a terrible thing that happened a long time ago in your it doesn't.
Anonymous Speaker 1:06:53
I would say it already does. Honestly. I think like there's that last little residual thing I got going on that I need to, that I would like to continue to work on. But other than that, I think my goal for a while has been and I've been working towards is just like, really being focused on maintaining, you know, like doing things that are stress relieving, because that's what I learned over these years is that over over this whole incident is that stress exacerbates the hell out of PTSD and, and all an anxiety and all these other things. So I just, you know, I just try to be really cognizant of that, and, and really focus on whatever it is like whether that's, like working out works great for me cooking anything like that, that I always try to have, like, keep in mind as a goal. And I think just being what's the word I'm looking forward? I think just being very aware of, of, like, where I'm at. So I don't end up in that, like really foggy space, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:08:12
seeing the edge of this slippery slope and doing something before you fall too far.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:17
Yeah,
Anonymous Speaker 1:08:18
cuz it was just like, for so long, I was just kind of like, in survival mode and going through the motions. And so I think, like, if I just being really aware of if I start slipping in that direction, like, Whoa, what's going on? You know? Yeah, I think that's how, you know, how I continue to move forward. And I think, you know, I'm glad that I was able to talk about it here, too. I really do like the idea of kind of being more of an advocate in the space. When it's, you know, when it's okay, when it's an okay, space to do it. Like, I don't, I don't need to talk to crazy people on the internet or anything. But you know,
Scott Benner 1:08:57
I'm, I'm really kind of overwhelmed that you think this is a good place to do something like this, but I
Anonymous Speaker 1:09:02
do know, I really, truly do like I, you know, I just think you've created such a such a supportive environment. Like, especially like I'm pretty active in the Facebook group. And I think that it's few and far between that I see anything that's not supportive.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:21
And I don't know, I
Anonymous Speaker 1:09:23
think I think it's just an open minded bunch that you that you created here.
Scott Benner 1:09:27
That's very nice to you. Thank you. I'm very proud of it. So that's excellent. Ah, can I ask you a question? Of course, how do you? What's the best way? What is the way or how do I want to ask my question? I'm assuming that being intimate now for you, you need to be a little in control. Like I'm wondering, I'm wondering about best practices for people who have been through what you're through or even for the guys that are with them. Like, what's that dance like?
Anonymous Speaker 1:09:57
Oh, that's a great question. Um, I'm thinking, yeah, to it. Yes, being in control 100% important. I think it's a combination of like identifying what it is that triggers for you.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:15
Like,
Anonymous Speaker 1:10:17
I'm trying to give an example. I know for me, like, I still, if I have, I'm not a big drinker, but if I do have a drink or two, I have a really hard time having sex. So I know that going into it. So that's something at this point, I'm just avoiding. And I think just really having really open communication with your partner and finding someone who's really willing to work on it with you, because it's, you know, it's a big hurdle. But the person I'm dating right now, I don't I don't feel like in that space, like, I don't feel that way. Because he's so supportive
Scott Benner 1:10:53
it is it not as specific as Hey, I'm gonna put my hand on your leg now. Like, is the whole thing feel like it's like a talking book? Or? Hi, should we move closer to the pillow? Like that?
Unknown Speaker 1:11:09
No, not now.
Anonymous Speaker 1:11:10
I mean, honest to God, though. Like when it first happened, like, someone had their arm around me. And I wanted to just combust. Like, it was awful. Like so. But now No, not at all. But But I mean, if there's something we wanted to do, that was like new, I would need to just kind of wrap my head around at first a little bit.
Scott Benner 1:11:29
We talk about a first it's not something that would happen in the in the moment kind of thing.
Anonymous Speaker 1:11:33
Exactly. And there's, there's certain things like, like, obviously, like, I do not like having my arms pinned down. That's not a thing. That's okay. Because I need to be able to deck him at any point. He knows that that's why, like, in case I need to punch you. He's like, Okay,
Unknown Speaker 1:11:47
what my arms free in case I have to punch you in the face. Yeah. Just in case. By the way, you're gonna punch him don't punch him in the face. There's better places.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:56
Right, I always was gonna go for the face.
Scott Benner 1:11:59
Some people can take a shot to the head. So.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:03
Exactly.
Scott Benner 1:12:03
Okay, so just, you know, a lot of communication. Yeah, like you lead the way. You know, identify things that are bad ideas and just avoid them.
Anonymous Speaker 1:12:14
Pretty much and like, you know, when you I think it's important to work through the things that you're avoiding, but do it Be patient that is my other recommendation is be really, really patient don't I mean, I I'm not patient with myself, I would, I would say, and I would get all bent out of shape. I'm like, Well, why isn't this working? I should be over this right. You know, give it take it takes time. Yeah. But uh, you know, you can get through it.
Scott Benner 1:12:41
I would imagine it takes as much time as it takes. Exactly. Yeah. And that you can't rush your way through it. Okay. All right. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that we should have? I know, you said you wrote some stuff down.
Anonymous Speaker 1:12:52
Oh, my God, I think we hit everything. No. I can't imagine anything else. I'm, I'm looking. I
Scott Benner 1:12:59
feel so accomplish when people say that, by the way, because I have no plan. So I'm just like, wow, that I actually get through the salient details of this.
Anonymous Speaker 1:13:09
Oh, yeah. No, I think I think we hit I'm just looking okay. Yeah, no, I think we had everything I think. I think also, like, I do have have one thing, it's kind of, I think with this salt piece, it's it's also tied. You know, you know how and I've heard people say, on a podcast, when you get diagnosed with diabetes, it's like, everyone kind of treats you like, it's that club. They want don't want to be in there like, Oh, right. And so I think, like, I think with the soul, it's the same kind of thing. But that's why and I started sound like a broken record. I keep bringing this up, but that's why I think it's important to bring up you know, so that it's not that oh, I don't know what to do or say about that. That's ugly. Right. So that it becomes something that's easier to to discuss. Other than that, no, I think we hit everything.
Scott Benner 1:14:05
Okay. I think you need to avoid, you know, it's just gonna sound disjointed, but I think it's like when you meet somebody and you know, somebody, not the first time you meet them, but you know, somebody who has like a serious health condition like like, say, somebody has cancer, like you can't just be around someone who has cancer, and never it comes up because then it just seems completely obvious that you're ignoring it. And that is as uncomfortable as talking about it sometimes. And so, is that what you're saying? Like you can't just like treat you like this never happened if you're a close friend or a confidant or something like that, like it has to be if it's appropriate conversation, that keeping it quiet is just as bad as if it were to come up. Is that the idea?
Anonymous Speaker 1:14:49
Yeah, exactly. And and at the same time, and this is a lot to ask with people right but at the same time, balancing the fact that that one bad thing isn't your full identity. Like, like someone who has cancer, like, that's not everything about them. They're still a person. Right? Like, I think, you know, just having finding that balance. And I think, you know, in my last relationship, when I told him about it, that was very important to me. I was like, I don't want this to be everything you think about me, like, you know? You know, so I, so I think it's, it's just important to have that balance, too.
Scott Benner 1:15:26
I can't, it's no different than you just people struggle with them seeing their children as diabetes sometimes. Exactly. Right. They just look at them. Like how's your blood sugar? Are you okay? Are you dizzy and the you're missing? The person you're seeing that? You don't want? You don't want who you are to be? Not so it should be centerstage who you are. That
Anonymous Speaker 1:15:47
way. There's Yeah, there's so much more to you than then just then diabetes. Yeah, whatever else you got going on? Because most people got other stuff going on,
Scott Benner 1:15:55
too. Right. I got it. I think I understand. Okay. Yeah. Well, you done a really wonderful thing here. And I can't thank you enough. I mean, just that it was your idea. You know, it's funny, somebody to go down a slightly different road. I was explaining something to somebody today. And they said, Where do you get your guests from? And I was like, I don't get my guests. They, they come to me. And, and she's like, what I'm like, well, there's like, every once in a while, like I said, you know, I'm I'm doing an eating series, and I needed somebody who ate ate in a very specific way. And I had to go out in the world and look for them. I was like, but everybody you hear on the podcast, wanted to be on the podcast, like they think they came to me. And, and so like stories like yours, or, you know, you and I were talking about it before it started the girl that came on and talked about opioid addiction. Like you don't know what a big deal that is, because she was the fourth person who approached me about talking about opioid addiction, and the first three for a number of different reasons. Couldn't get to record it. And she did. And, you know, so topics like this are difficult, you know, it's obviously, they're incredibly hard to talk about. They're difficult to listen to sometimes. But they're important. And it takes people who are brave like you to step up and talk about them. And it's just a really big deal to me that you chose to do it with me. I really appreciate it. Oh, well, thank
Anonymous Speaker 1:17:22
you. Yeah, no, and I and I, like I said, I think you've made such a supportive space to even do so I felt comfortable reaching out to, even though I feel like I know you because I listened to you all the time, but just basically talking to a stranger,
Unknown Speaker 1:17:37
about this horrible thing.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:40
But here we are.
Scott Benner 1:17:42
It really does feel like that. It feels like what if I just picked up the phone, dial random numbers, got somebody on the phone and started telling you about like my medical issue, like, Hey,
Unknown Speaker 1:17:52
I'm like, I'm thinking about it. I'm like, Oh, yeah, I'm
Anonymous Speaker 1:17:54
gonna talk to this guy. I feel like I know, because I listened to him. But basically this random guy on zoom,
Scott Benner 1:17:59
literally a random person, and they're going to record it and then let a lot of people listen to it. So right, what a great decision I've made here. But no, it's the knowledge you're going to help somebody. It's funny. When I made the joke about calling somebody with a health problem, I thought to make up a health problem. And then I thought no matter which one I make up people listening are gonna think I really have it. So I just didn't make a joke. I was like, oh, if I joke about that people like, oh, he has that. I was like, Oh, I can't do it. But no, I mean, it's just, it's a weird. I mean, the mediums amazing. Like, like, seriously, think about what you just talked about 15 years ago, you would have had to have been on 60 minutes to tell this story. Yeah, seriously, the world did not work like this before, before you could make a podcast. And and so people didn't hear these things. And they didn't hear them with any frequency. Like I think it's it's, you know, the first time there's an after dark episode, which by the way, I even hate calling them those. I hate calling them after dark, because I don't think that they should be in the dark. I just think that that's how people see them. So
Anonymous Speaker 1:19:04
yeah, I think it's good. Just like you're saying, God forbid a kid is listening to it.
Scott Benner 1:19:10
Yeah, I don't want something wrong. And so I have to kind of brand it so that people understand it. Some people are much easily, much more easily triggered than others. So they should have an opportunity to know what it is they're getting into. Right? Like your episodes not going to have a fun title where they get,
Unknown Speaker 1:19:25
you know, so unfortunate.
Anonymous Speaker 1:19:29
That would be really awful. If they were like, Oh, this is about I don't know.
Scott Benner 1:19:33
Yeah, plants. Yeah. You don't want to like get halfway in and go, Oh, gosh, I didn't. I didn't mean to be here. And I didn't even realize that until someone someone said to me very recently about one of the afterdark that I think is terrific. I think it's one of them without drugs. She's like, Hey, I can't listen to that. Oh, and I was like, Oh, well, I'm glad that it was clearly marked because I didn't reckon I didn't think anybody would because I don't have an issue with it. I just imagine nobody would but but my point is is that story Like this, you know, didn't get told with frequency. And you might not be the last one like someone else, I have to tell you, the first time I interviewed somebody who had bipolar disorder, I thought, well, that'll never happen again. Except I'm editing another show now with a person who has bipolar disorder, because they heard the first person and they were like, hey, my story's a little different. Let me tell you mine. And I was like, That's amazing. So you might not be the last person I talked to about something like this. And I think that's how we, I think that's how we get to the things you talked about, like treat people normally know what to do know what to look for. Because you mean, you You gave a lot of good tips here today about how to how to sniff out a creepy person.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:43
I don't know that.
Scott Benner 1:20:44
You know what, because when you're a decent person, you just think other people are decent.
Anonymous Speaker 1:20:49
I know it's not. Yeah, that's so the truth is,
Scott Benner 1:20:53
I just don't imagine anybody screwing with me. Because I'm not screwing with anybody.
Anonymous Speaker 1:20:59
And that's Yeah. And that's how I am now. Like, I'm just, this person's probably screwing with me. But also like, I'm such a I'm such a sucker for balance, but also balancing that was like, not everyone's out to get you but they might be. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:17
Got it going for it. correction. Did
Scott Benner 1:21:19
this cause any strange correction of like, how you like, did you do do anything oddly differently than June before? Like, is your pace is your purse like full of mace and guns and things like that, like your brass knuckles with you like, or have you not gone that direction?
Unknown Speaker 1:21:38
You know,
Anonymous Speaker 1:21:38
I do I run and I do bring pepper spray with me. That is the only thing I can think of it. Yeah, it I would say yeah, like I do. Like, if I'm getting in an elevator, it's just me and one other person. I'm like, just one other person. Right. Like, it's that kind of stuff. But I wouldn't say it, like completely changed me as a person. But it it did make me a lot more aware.
Scott Benner 1:22:02
If it makes you more aware of your size.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:05
Yes, it did.
Scott Benner 1:22:06
Okay,
Anonymous Speaker 1:22:07
it definitely did. Yeah, I didn't realize how small I was until. And I'm not, you know, I'm sure I'm not like a little skinny toothpick or anything by any means. But I was like, Oh, all right.
Scott Benner 1:22:20
There's just a disparity between generally speaking between men and women's like, strength in size. And, and the way it occurred to me is like Arden's five, seven. She's one of the tallest girls, like, in her high school, as an example. But she, but but you know, like, she'll tell me at home because she's the shortest person in the house. She feels small.
Anonymous Speaker 1:22:43
On the phone, and I actually got Sorry, I was I was at the gym the other day. And I'm like, doing like lifting weights in a mirror. And I'm like, I am so freaking short. like looking at the other people. There's like, there's like, these women are about five, seven. And I'm like, Oh my god, I look like a literal midget in comparison. I had no way like, I don't know.
Scott Benner 1:23:04
I mean, it's just that we joke around like my wife's five, nine. And yeah, she's and she's strong. And she'll like every once in a while. She's like, I could take you and I one time I said to her, I was like, Listen, this is not an adversarial thing. I was like, but speaking seriously, if you and I got into some sort of a death feud. I knock your head off. You know that right? And she was like, No, and I'm like, No, you. It's not the same thing. Like I know, that's weird. Like, I'm not an overpoweringly menacingly, large man. But I could I could easily overpower my wife.
Anonymous Speaker 1:23:36
Oh, yeah, this is the ongoing fight between me and my boyfriend because I keep telling him I could take him but I know for real I get it.
Scott Benner 1:23:43
Yeah, no, it's unfortunate. But but that's the thing that some women have to actually live with, like the knowledge that there are other people in the world that can overpower me if they want to. Yeah, like and you'd have to be a lot bigger than me to overpower me if you were a guy. Like I'm not saying it couldn't happen. But I'd stand a fighting chance, you know what I mean? And, and that's just I was wondering if the if that has become kind of, you know, front and center in your mind now that that this has happened? I just Well,
Unknown Speaker 1:24:12
yeah, definitely more than it ever was for sure.
Scott Benner 1:24:14
Yeah. Cuz you just don't. Like I said before until you there's a point in your life where you don't imagine anything Bad's ever gonna happen to you. I know. It's not fun, you know? And at that moment, you're just like, I'm me and you're just rolling around you know, five 310 pounds like I can I can conquer everybody like meanwhile most people get back and you and knock you over. You just don't you don't think of it that way.
Anonymous Speaker 1:24:37
I'm glad you're envisioning me as 110 pounds. That's
Unknown Speaker 1:24:39
great. Keep keep thinking.
Scott Benner 1:24:45
Now, I was just going for a weight that I felt like I could easily back here and actually what I said,
Anonymous Speaker 1:24:49
Oh, got it. No, we can pretend it's me. That's
Scott Benner 1:24:52
that there's a comedian that has that joke. Like you know, like, you know, I could overpower everyone in my house at the same time. You Like, and no one thinks that way about it. And I just don't. I wonder if men listening can understand because they don't have this feeling. It's kind of why I'm talking about this. Yeah, the women in your life. Some of them more than others are, are painfully aware that in a physical situation, they'd likely be overwhelmed, and how and how frightening that must be to have to live that way. Oh, yeah, my point, you know, and guys, generally speaking, don't have to live that way. Although I know some guys that you know, I mean, honestly, you kick their ass easily. They wouldn't stand any chance. I'm thinking
Unknown Speaker 1:25:38
I should fight them.
Scott Benner 1:25:39
I'm literally thinking of three people right now that I think could be beaten by a small child. So Alright, this has gotten off the rails. And there are going to be some people like you can't joke around with the end of an episode about stuff like this, but I don't know what else to do. I'm trying to get the tension out of my chest.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:54
No, you can you can joke around for
Anonymous Speaker 1:25:57
sure. It's fine. I like sweated out at least 20 pounds right now. During this conversation,
Unknown Speaker 1:26:01
I made sure I made you close your window too. So it's even worse.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:04
Yeah. Oh, yeah, exactly. All
Scott Benner 1:26:06
right. Well, thank you very much. Hold on one second. Okay. Okay.
I'd like to thank the person who this episode very much. And thank all of you for listening to her story. Again, if you need help rainn.org are a i n n dot o RG or 1-800-656-4673. One 800 656 hope you can get help. 24 seven. I learned a lot in this conversation. But the process of this conversation and the one that came prior taught me something very important. The person you just heard who told this incredibly courageous story. I heard I had already recorded it an hour or more with them just four weeks prior. And I would have had no way of knowing that any of this had ever happened to them. That just kind of kept rattling in my head is she and I were talking that I felt like I had a complete conversation with her that she told me about her life, and that this had happened to her and that there was no sign of it in our previous conversation. Well, that was concerning, honestly. So let me go back again for a second and explain that feeling. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center, which is another place you can go for help. And SV RC, it's an sb rc.org has statistics here. This is from a 2010 Summary Report. Nearly one in five women 18.3% of women and one in 71 men 1.4% of men in the United States have been raped at some time in their lives. This includes completed forced penetration, attempted force penetration, or alcohol or drug facilitated completed penetration. More than half of the female victims of rape reported being raped by an intimate partner and 40.8% by an acquaintance for male victims. More than half 53.4% reported being raped by an acquaintance and 15.1% by a stranger. These statistics go on and on. And they just rang over and over again in my heart. As we were talking today, that this person that I spoke to who had this great happy conversation with me about type one diabetes in their life could have gone through this. And most people will never know. And that made me think about the 18.3% of the women I know. And the 1.4% of men. Okay, well, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Juicebox Podcast. There'll be more episodes coming this week, a little lighter and less serious. But I again, I really think these conversations are incredibly important and valuable, and I appreciate that you listen and to the person who told me their story today. I am so sorry that I cannot thank you by name, but it means a lot to me that you felt safe doing it here.
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