#636 Defining Thyroid: Goiter

Scott and Jenny Smith define thyroid terms.

In this Defining Thyroid episode, Scott and Jenny explain Goiter and talk supplements and nutirition.

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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 636 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Today I bring you the sixth installment of the defining thyroid series today Jenny Smith and I are going to talk about goiter, and supplementing, and some other stuff. So far in the defining thyroid series, we've tackled hypothyroidism, and Hashimotos thyroiditis, that's an episode 616. In Episode 619, we define pituitary and thyroid glands. In Episode 624, we defined P S H testing, and in Episode 628, we define T four and T three. In episode 632. We talked about auto immune, and today we're gonna be talking about goiter, supplementing and some other stuff. It's kind of a, I don't want to call today a free for all but today is sort of a building conversation. You'll well you'll see in a minute. While you're listening today, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin.

If you have type one diabetes, or are the caregiver of someone with type one, and are a US resident, please go to T one D exchange.org. Ford slash juicebox. And take the survey. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omni pod makers of the Omni pod dash, the Omni pod promise and the upcoming Omni pod five. Learn more about that Omni pod dash and see if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial at Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox. Today's episode is short. So at the end, I'll explain how you may be eligible for that free 30 days of the AMI pod dash. Alright, Jenny, we're gonna we're gonna do a quick All right, I'm already laughing ready? Goyder?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:25
I know it's such a funny word. Funny Little word. Really goitre. Like, couldn't. There are many medical terms that I think are hilarious. But definitely goiter is one of them. It is. It's funny.

Scott Benner 2:37
I don't know. I'm just I always wonder still. Why, you know, we didn't find out what Hashimotos first name was before they named it?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:46
Well, I think the thing about goiter, too, is the fact that like there's a visible part of Goyder, right? It's not just like the name. That's right. That's funny. Like there's a visible piece that on your body, you're like, ooh, that doesn't look normal. shouldn't really be there.

Scott Benner 3:01
Well, and some people can get them. I mean, they can look like real like lumps in your neck, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:07
Yes, yes, my mom. In fact, when I've seen pictures of my mom, I mean, they're the really old like fading types of pictures before she was diagnosed or within the process. She had a very visible I was on both sides of her neck, she had a very visible she had kind of like the protruding sort of like eyes. There were a lot of things that were very like, that's diagnostic there for her. But, but yes, goiter is essentially an alert and enlargement of the thyroid gland. If that all that we just said did, like, bring that up. That's what it is enlargement of the thyroid gland.

Scott Benner 3:46
goiter also called enlarged thyroid probably by a doctor who laughed every time he said goiter. You know, when it's um, gosh. Do you remember I'm really gonna date myself. There used to be this. People used to shop on TV. I don't know if that's the thing that everyone knows. But there were like infomercials or longer commercials that some guy would come on with a deep voice and tell you about the the heartbreak of psoriasis, you know, or something? Yes. And it's the word terror, which has nothing to do with anything we're talking about here but sticks in my head since I'm a child, because you know, the heartbreak of surprises you and he runs through these lists of other things you might see. And then he goes terror. And it's like stuck in my head. I don't know why I can't get rid of it. I don't even know what it means. That's really funny. So, goiter says abnormal enlargement of the butterfly shaped gland, below the Adam's apple, which is called the thyroid. Of course, a goiter commonly develops as a result of iodine deficiency or inflammation of the thyroid gland. Not all goiters cause symptoms symptoms that do occur might include swelling cough. Rarely, symptoms may include throat tightness or trouble breathing A small goiter that doesn't cause symptoms may not need treatment. In some cases, medication or surgery is needed. Doesn't have. So it's so funny because I'm actually learning something here today. So it shows me we're on the right track, Jenny. Yes. So goiter. I mean, not that I'm just repeating myself. But goiter is an enlarged thyroid. It's not a thing. It's not like a new thing that appears in your neck. It's, it's the enlarged,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:34
it's the thyroid and large and really reason. I mean, the reason is because your thyroid gets kind of signaled too much by the pituitary gland to bring out more thyroid hormone, right, I mean, that's the gist of it. And so that over stimulation can cause the thyroid to get larger. And to some people get large enough that you could visibly see that see the change,

Scott Benner 6:03
and the reason in the United States that you would kind of pretty much think thyroid hormone problem or nodules, when you see a goiter. But I guess Believe it or not, is because we have iodized salt in the United States.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:21
Yes, we do. As long as you truly get iodized salt,

Scott Benner 6:26
right. Yeah. Can you get it non right.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:28
But I mean, if you look, and it's interesting, since we started doing all of these about thyroid specifically, I've started paying attention to salt at the grocery store. I like the grocery store anyway, so. But I was noticing like at Costco specifically, there are big things of sea salt, specifically state on the label. This is not a valuable source of iodine in the diet. So does Himalayan sea salt. I mean, there are many salts that have now become this as the preferred to use that no longer have enough of it in it.

Scott Benner 7:10
Yep. And it's so so in a past episode, I think in the goitre episode, I talked about No, not in the greater episode in the autoimmune episode. This is the goiter episode I talked about. I talked about a new rheumatologist that that ardency she spent 10 minutes talking about iodine and how it's interesting, not in our diet anymore. You know, and and then she went into talking about, I think this kind of fits, she went into talking about even when you eat well, in a factory farming society, you're not eating as well as you think you are. And she used an example of she chose a very popular grocery store chain and said, they, some of their fruits, they they flash freeze, and they don't deliver them to you for months afterwards. And she's like, they have ways of delivering foods where they show up to you with not nearly as much nutritional quality and quality believe that they have because you're like, Ooh, I'm eating a piece of fruit or I'm eating a vegetable. She said but the they've been decimated for nutrition all the time. And she started talking about having to supplement things that you just even if you have a certain diet, you might not know you need to supplement and that that's what made me think of this, which is you know, we all use salt and things. So if you used iodized salt and you have a goiter, it's likely not because of iodine, it's likely because of thyroid, but in other places in the world or if you've gotten all Fifi and you're using sea salt which I say jokingly because I realized this we're talking I switched to pink salt like years ago years ago right? I absolutely don't use much of the other people might have still use the salt shaker but I I have a little salt

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:04
pig you like that you like the pink salt.

Scott Benner 9:08
I like to take a little pinch and just like you know let it go over top of things and and now I'm realized that I better just shake this the shaker a little bit myself once in a while. Okay, glitters did not look pleasant in the photographs.

Unknown Speaker 9:22
No, they don't. Yeah.

Scott Benner 9:25
And your mother had one. My mother

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:27
had one. Yes, a noticeable one again from pictures and whatnot from that time and then once her thyroid was well managed, and she actually had thyroid burnout and everything because she was hyperthyroid and now she actually takes the typical levothyroxine because she has hypothyroid because of everything wise

Scott Benner 9:51
I have to say when I when I just Googled for pictures of goiter when they come back with like no not drawings but like but actual therapy. Following photographs, a lot of them do look like they don't live in the United States. That's interesting. That is interesting. Yeah. And while they can get massive in some Yeah. Oh, that's horrible. Okay. All right. Fun times here on the podcast.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:14
Yes, exactly. From time.

Scott Benner 10:17
There's nothing else to add to this one, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:19
I don't think so. No, there's certainly things that I could add, but I don't think that they're as 13. I'll

Scott Benner 10:25
just read this last piece that I had here in larger the thyroid gland, when your thyroid is bombarded by signals from the pituitary in an effort to trigger the thyroid into making more hormones. The excessive stimulation may cause the thyroid gland to enlarge to the point where you have a bulge in your neck. So this seems like that means in the case of an actual thyroid issue, but not an iodine deficiency, correct? Exactly. All right. Well, let's never speak of this again. Seriously,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:57
unless somebody comments, just like I want to learn more about guider, and

Scott Benner 11:01
we'd be happy to talk about it. But my goodness, that is that is very unpleasant, we'd

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:05
have to find a greater ologists, I think.

Scott Benner 11:09
I'll tell you what, if my life gets down to that, Jenny, I'm not, I can't do this anymore. That's fine. I'm trying to outline the fact that I think that if I don't get Arden straightened out, and everybody else doesn't just stay healthy for five minutes, I'm gonna like light my underwear on fire and start running around the streets much longer.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:36
Everybody just needs to well, and what it actually goes along with something that I It sounds like you really found a quite good physician, because a lot of what she was telling you about the quality of food, I mean, it's the big reason that I take or spend the extra to buy non farm raised fish, okay, because the difference between farm raised salmon and actual wild salmon, there's a major difference. If you look at farm raised salmon, and you look at the package, you will see color added that color is added because they haven't been being fed the wide diet that they would eat in the wild to actually get the quality or megas that your body the benefit of eating salmon or tuna is for the omegas which in your daughter's case, the doctor was like, hey, you need more omegas right? Well, don't buy farm raised fish then because that's not going to help her anymore.

Scott Benner 12:38
I want to say too, she spent a lot of time showing us how to read labels on supplements, vitamins, and she said there are overwhelmingly more useless vitamins on the market, then, you know, she's like, and they're very good at marketing it to make it sound like they're good, but she's like there's nothing in them. It's just a it's just a waste of your money.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:59
So my original naturopath when I saw her years ago, um, she actually did the same thing. What supplements are you using? How are you using them, and she actually recommended very minimal list of quality, just multivitamins, and at that time I had needed to start taking like a prenatal vitamin, right in terms of preparation for getting pregnant. And she was like these are the ones and don't pick outside of those this list. These are quality they come actually the nutrients come from real food sources, not from synthetic something something she's like otherwise you paying for a bottle of what's actually getting peed out into the toilet.

Scott Benner 13:39
He also told me that the real popular vitamins that people know are good get knocked off online, so you have to be careful about even buying them from Amazon. And what else did she say? Oh yeah, anything that you can absorb to the lining of your mouth is preferable over swallowing it. So she gave Arden vitamin D drops instead of like sardines, one of those people that takes 50,000 I use a vitamin D a week, like once a week. And she's like No, she's like, just do these drops instead.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:07
Again, it goes back to the gut and absorption and they know very well that the gut and absorption and people who have type one is lacking. My my naturopath did the same thing. My vitamin D was 18 Yeah, the doctor had given me a supplement, huge dose like pills, supplements. And he was like, I don't know I started seeing a naturopath. She said you need to drop you need to put it under your tongue every single day, get things retested in eight weeks and come back and they were up already.

Scott Benner 14:38
You know, it's funny I'll add here before we end this one and move on to the next that if you would have found me before Arden had type one diabetes and before I knew anything about all this stuff, and had this conversation with me, I would have said oh I met a hippie lady today that was talking about vitamins and how they're not all the same and you know, you got to take vitamin D under Your tongue and I think she was high on the weed is what I would have thought, you know, they mean like, oh well, lovely cookie woman, you know, but now I know you're not cookie, and I'm not either. Thank you. So there's way more to this than, than most people would think, Oh, just just getting your supplements, right? It's not coming from your food. I mean, everybody, look when this is over today, take five minutes, close your eyes, be honest with yourself and think about what you've eaten this week. And tell me if there's food in any of it. Or if you're just keeping yourself alive and not nurturing yourself. You know, so I, I was on a road trip yesterday. I got up very early in the morning, I did not feel like eating, I drove a couple of 100 miles. I saw my son, I drove a couple of 100 miles back, I drank two bottles of water in the morning. I peed in a sketchy rest stop. I went to get my son. We went to lunch, where we went to a English pub, and I had fish and chips. So I had cod, probably not deep fried, but I stay away from the oil. So I picked all the breading off of it. And then I had fries and a little bit of ketchup. And then I got in a car and drove home and ate a peppermint patty, because that's what I could find it a rest stop. And then I got home and that is what I'd eaten that day. You know, and if you asked me, How do I eat? I'd probably say I'm fine. Because the day before I didn't eat well, but I didn't. I didn't on Sunday. And you really do have to start asking yourself, Am I I'm fueling myself and I'm not hungry, and I'm staying alive. But am I bringing in the nutrition that my body actually needs to maintain itself and to rebuild itself from problems? You know, and I think for most of us, I really I hate to say it, I'm not coming down on people. I think most of us, I don't think we do really?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:53
Right? Well, and I think if you ask many people who have enough resources and whatnot to actually have enough food in their life, it's quantity of food seems enough. So they would say yes, I'm well fed. Well, what's the quality? Not the quantity of what you're eating? Because quite honestly, here in our United States, we have enough quantity,

Scott Benner 17:19
right? It's almost hard to go hungry at this point. Yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 17:23
So you know, and I mean, there are certainly people who do struggle for enough. But even them unfortunately, what they can have then access to doesn't have a quality piece to it. It's what they can have is what they can have, because this is what's affordable. And unfortunately, there's not much quality there.

Scott Benner 17:47
Yeah, no, I mean, if you are a person who's listening to this in the hopes of fine tuning your health, there's nothing in a Dorito that's going to help with that, I guess is the message. Even though I will say this of all the longtime foods from my childhood, the junk foods, Doritos has done the best job of keeping the experience of a Dorito the same as it was 20 years ago. Here's a short list of people who have not Fruity Pebbles, Apple Jacks, just using. There are some junk foods that people have just messed up over the years. For funny, Fruity Pebbles is my biggest disappointment. Jenny's like I don't know what a fruity Pebble is that? I'm not eating it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:26
I don't Well, the funny thing is I do but we didn't have we didn't have those. I think I've had 30 pebbles, maybe once in my life. And it was just because my parents just didn't buy that kind of stuff. If we did have cereal, it was way way up camping. And it was like honey nut cheerios, right. I mean, that was like, and I mean, it still has sugar added to it. Obviously it's still you know what it is? But yeah, I think we just we didn't get that kind of stuff. I was actually talking to somebody the other day and I were talking about like kids and what they eat and whatever and it was like my children have never been enough Donald's

Unknown Speaker 19:05
like we can pass and Donald's and there is no Mama Mama Mama.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:11
They don't really I mean, my nine year old now obviously knows what it is but he would have no desire to stop there. Because we just don't that's not a regular thing for us to do.

Scott Benner 19:23
Yeah, in my house. It was soccer because Kelly did not did not want our children to play soccer we gave them no context for when they were growing up. I know I've told this story before but it I don't think to me that's interesting. We bears it bears repeating because you can you can impact how your children go up and what they think to do and what they think to don't do you know, food being the example but when my son was like two or three years old, we were stopped at a traffic light and there was a men's league and they were playing soccer. I'm talking about like hundreds of people spread out over five soccer fields. My son says, Mommy, what are they doing? And Kelly looks out the window and looks back and goes I have No idea and the light turned green. And we drove away. Because Kelly's sisters played soccer growing up, and Kelly hated going to soccer games. Ah, she's like I didn't, she didn't want to have a kid who played soccer. So we just didn't tell him what it was. And he just didn't, he never asked about it. And that that was it. And I, I'm dialing that back to your, you can, you can move your children in the right direction with a lot of different things. Even taking a supplement every day, you know, like just a multivitamin. You can make that part of their life to the point where they get older, they just, they just do it. You know, because not every older kid just you know, if you you realize when you're 20 years old, you need a a multivitamin or something. It's not going to be easy to get everyone to integrate that into their life. You know, most people are gonna have a hard time adding things as adults. So,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:52
right. I mean, even my five year old can go to the refrigerator and pick something like he'll often want and want to do it himself. An apple cut up with peanut butter. That's like his favorite thing ever. He can he make his own egg salad. I think it's pretty awesome. It's not pretty. And it certainly is kind of messy on the counter. But you know what? He can make his own eggs

Scott Benner 21:16
to do it. Well, that's, that's the, that's the takeaway from this one is you can make decisions about how you eat and how you get. There you go. Alright, Jen, do we have time for one more? Yeah, absolutely. If you're tired of injecting your insulin with a pen, or a syringe, or you have a pump with all kinds of crazy tubing attached to it, that you really don't like, this next bit is for you.

The Omni pod tubeless insulin pump does not have any tubing. That's why they call it tubeless. I know you're thinking that's not possible. But it is Omni pod doesn't have tubing. Other insulin pumps have a controller with a cartridge, connected the tubing that kind of you know, goes all over the place to an infusion set. And then that's how you get your insulin through that long tube. But with Ali pod, there is no tubing, no tubing to get caught on door handles. And nothing to disconnect when you're bathing or swimming. Because the Omni pod is, you know, it's happy in the water. You can go in the bathtub, in the shower in the local lake. You can go wherever you want wearing your Omni pod tubeless insulin pump. That's pretty important because then you don't lose your insulin during those times. How many of you have disconnected for a shower only to forget to reconnect to your tubed insulin pump? When do you find out an hour or two later when your blood sugar's sky high? Because you haven't had any insulin for a while. Why? Because you had to disconnect for a shower. That shouldn't be the way and with Omni pod it isn't. Now if this all sounds magical or different to you, and you're not sure what to do, I understand that, but you may be eligible for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash. Now go to Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox to find out. If you're eligible, Omni pod, we'll send you a free 30 day supply. You can check it out and see what you think. And even if you decide to stick with what you're doing after the trial, you still got our free 30 days. How often you get a free month of anything. So the Omni pod dash is tubeless it's waterproof, you can shower with it, or you know swimming the pool. Right the pool the pool. Are you thinking about summer I just made me think about summer. It's not here yet kids slipped through this cold a little longer anyway. swim in the pool. Don't get your tubing caught anything, don't have any tubing to be sneaking through your clothing. It's all pretty great. And no multiple daily injections. With the Omni pod, you just pull out the PDM that's the personal diabetes manager's little handheld device kind of looks like a cell phone. And you you just say I'm gonna have 12 carbs, he talks a little thing 12 carbs and says I think you should have this much insulin, you know, based on your settings and you go okay, push a button and boom, boom, here comes the insulin. No injections. I love it. Now you might be thinking, Alright, Scott, I want it on the pod but I've been hearing about this Omni pod five, and I'm just gonna wait for that. Hmm, I would say in a normal circumstance, I understand. But with the Omni pod promise, you don't have to do that. Here's what the Omni pod promise says. You get the Omni pod dash today. And you start using it and you love it. And then I don't know, a month from now two months from now whenever Omni pod five is available for you and covered by your insurance. You just move up to the Omni pod five. That's the Omni pod promise. The Omni pod promise says you can go to new technology that Omni pod has, when it's available to you and covered by your insurance. That's it, you want to change, you can change. That's a pretty good promise on the pod.com forward slash juice box, you might as well go poke around on the website and figure it out a little bit. See if you're up for it. Check to see if you know you're eligible for that free trial and get started today. Omni pod.com forward slash juice box. There are links in the show notes of your podcast player and at Juicebox Podcast comm to Omnipod and all of the sponsors

if you're wondering what signs and symptoms to look for in hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, Graves' disease, and Hashimotos, I'm going to list them all for you right now. If you already know what they are. Well then thanks so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. But if you're waiting for the signs and symptoms they're gonna happen like right now. symptoms of hypothyroidism Farey the Mayo Clinic list of possible symptoms such as fatigue, increased sensitivity to cold constipation, dry skin, weight gain, puffy face, hoarseness, muscle weakness, elevated blood cholesterol level, muscle aches, tenderness and stiffness, pain stiffness or swelling in your joints heavier than normal or irregular menstrual periods. thinning hair slow heart rate depression impaired memory enlarged thyroid gland, which could be known as a goiter. If you're looking for this in infants, you might also look for a large protruding tongue difficulty breathing, hoarse, crying, an umbilical hernia, or yellowing of the skin and whites of the eyes. As the disease progresses in infants, you may also notice constipation, poor muscle tone and excessive sleepiness. In teens, you may notice poor growth resulting in short stature, delayed development of permanent teeth, delayed puberty were poor mental development. Let's move on to hyperthyroidism. Still on the Mayo Clinic's website, they say of course, that hyperthyroidism can mimic other health problems. We've been talking about this through all these episodes, you know that unintentional weight loss even when your appetite and food intake stay the same? We're increase, rapid heartbeat, irregular heartbeat, pounding of your heart, increased appetite, nervousness, anxiety, and irritability. Tremors, usually a fine trembling in your hands or fingers, sweating changes in menstrual patterns, increase sensitivity he changes in bowel patterns, especially more frequent bowel movements, and enlarged thyroid gland of course called a goiter, which may appear a swelling at the base of your neck, fatigue, muscle weakness, difficulty sleeping, skin thinning, fine embrittle hair. For Graves disease, you're looking for dry eyes, red or swollen eyes, excessive tearing or discomfort in one or both eyes, light sensitivity, blurred or double vision, inflammation or reduced eyes movement, protruding eyeballs just quickly Hashimotos disease which as we know is an autoimmune version of hypothyroidism. Hashimotos disease progresses slowly over the years you may not notice signs or symptoms of the disease eventually the decline in thyroid hormone production can result in a the following. There going to be a lot of duplicates here from hypothyroidism, fatigue and sluggishness, increased sensitivity to cold increase sleepiness, dry skin, constipation, muscle weakness, muscle aches, tenderness and stiffness, joint pain and stiffness, irregular or excessive menstrual bleeding, depression, problems with memory or concentration, swelling of the thyroid, the goiter of puffy face, brittle nails, hair loss, enlargement of the tongue. I'd like to just finish by saying that if you have any of these, please see a doctor get a simple blood test and get yourself some answers. Don't forget a TSH over two is enough reason to be concerned. Treat your symptoms, not the lab values. Thanks again for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

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#635 DKA on a Speedboat

Ezra was diagnosed in Costa Rica. His mother tells the story.

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public, Amazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.

+ 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 635 of the Juicebox Podcast

Sara is with us today she is the mother of a child with type one diabetes and her child was diagnosed while on a family trip to Costa Rica. If you thought episode 478 DK a on a plane was crazy. Wait until you hear this because Sarah story is crazy on steroids. While you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. After today's show, please consider going to T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox. To fill out the survey, you have to be a US resident who has type one or a US resident who is the parent or caregiver of a type one. This survey will only take you a few minutes, it can happen right there on your phone. And if you're interested, it may give you the option to be in trials in the future. T one D exchange.org forward slash juicebox.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omni pod. If you are looking for a tubeless insulin pump, you're looking for the Omni pod dash. I'll be telling you more about it later in the show. But right now you could go over to Omni pod.com forward slash juice box to learn more about the Omni pod dash. See if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial of the dash. And if you'd like to learn more about the Omni pod five, you can go to Omni pod.com forward slash juice box five. Alright, everybody, buckle up. Sarah is gonna tell a story. And multiple times during this story, you're gonna think yourself. Oh, why did she just say? speedboat? No. Okay.

Sarah 2:23
Hello, my name is Sarah and we live in the Midwest. And my son Ezra who is 11 years old is a type one diabetic.

Scott Benner 2:35
already so many things don't make sense. You're in the Midwest, but your son's name is Ezra.

Unknown Speaker 2:40
He was born on the West Coast. Just say that just

Scott Benner 2:43
don't try to confuse me.

Sarah 2:45
We're temporary residents of the Midwest originating from a hippie town on the West Coast.

Scott Benner 2:51
Now I get it came out of the gate trying to confuse me. It's not necessary. How old was Ezra when he was diagnosed? As I

Sarah 3:02
was nine years old, and is 11 now and he's 11 My memory

Scott Benner 3:06
is rock solid this morning. I was amazing. I know for many people like Scott, you've only been recording for a minute, but it's a lot for me. So okay, so he's nine years old had two years any in your family at all? How about you? Yeah, roadwork anything like that.

Sarah 3:22
Everything's, I'm all good. But my dad was a type one diabetic who passed away at 46. So I was 14 when he died.

Scott Benner 3:31
These are the, um, I don't I don't think I've ever said this out loud. But that was one of the hardest, like, backgrounds to listen to is when a parent of a child, you know, in modern times has type one. And then they say, Oh, my, my mom or my dad had it, but it didn't go well. And, and that's how it's because that must scare the hell out of you. Right.

Sarah 3:54
Yeah, it absolutely does. I think. I think that it's, it's like kind of always looming, I'd say.

Scott Benner 4:05
And, you know, I mean, you've like fundamentally and intellectually, you know, that care now and care when your father had diabetes is completely different. But it's, I would imagine it's just hard to shake that. Yeah, my brain.

Sarah 4:18
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he died. So he was diagnosed, diagnosed in his early 30s. So that was a little bit unique, too. So he only had he was only type one for maybe like 15 years. And I don't you know, I was a kid. So I don't really remember what his management was like. I don't remember. I mean, I remember him having low blood sugar, and we'd be out and about doing things and all of a sudden, we'd need to like, run to the McDonald's drive thru so he could get like those little packets of honey or everything would be fine. And then he'd have low blood sugar and he'd just be really his mood would change. But aside from that, I you know, I don't really remember Number A lot of the day to day management of it, and he, you know, I yeah, I just I don't know, I wish I knew more my parents were divorced and I. So my mom doesn't have a really good kind of history on it. And I was living with him alone when he died. It but again, you know, I was a kid. So it's just not really there.

Scott Benner 5:26
Well, so say your parents divorced before he was diagnosed or after

Sarah 5:31
they divorced after. So he was diagnosed around the time I was born, which was in 77. And then they divorced in 82. So he, I mean, a lot of the period of his diabetes, my parents weren't together for you and only child. I have a sister who's a little bit younger than I am younger.

Scott Benner 5:51
And so when your parents divorced, you live with your father.

Sarah 5:55
When my parents divorced, we both lived with my mom. And then, you know, as I got a little bit older, and I was in my teen years, she and I were having a lot of problems. And so I went and lived with him.

Scott Benner 6:06
Gotcha. Yeah, I, you need a moderator when your teenage daughter becomes a teenager? Yeah, there's gotta be another voice going, Whoa, whoa, ladies, what are we doing? A timeout timeout. You know, this might not make sense to younger parents or people who don't have kids. But there's, I don't know how to think of it if it's if it's currency or what it is. But as a as a man in a in a standard relationship where there's a wife, and some children, and some of those children or women or men doesn't matter. Every time you see your wife have an issue with your kids, and you think you need to interject, you realize you're about to spend some of your capital. You don't get it back, you know? Like, like, it's like you started with $100. And every time you open your mouth, and you're like, Hey, listen, I think I think she's making sense here. Like your, your wife looks at you and just pulls out a ledger and goes minus five. And

Sarah 7:10
we're taking another five points off right there.

Scott Benner 7:13
And then there's notes underneath where it says didn't take my side conversation about bah. And you're like, listen, I think, you know, and then you'll come in, in a situation where like, Hey, listen, Arden is obviously wrong here. I will step in. And you would think that maybe there'd be like a bell that goes off. And I would like regain some of the capital. That doesn't work that way. I only go backwards. I've never gone up. So I take your point about you and your mom. I mean, I don't know. I'm assuming Kelly and Arden would have killed each other years ago if I wasn't here. And I bet you that they don't think that at all, by the way. No. You're never gonna get credit for that. Oh, no, no, I think they just think I'm a moron. You know, whatever. I'm the glue. But they'll think that they think I'm sure they're the glue for me in ways to not saying anyway. Okay, so you and your mom almost call each other's eyes out. You end up with your dad. More or less? Yeah. Are you and your mom just very similar?

Sarah 8:17
Um, you know, no, we're very different. And I think that was the the rub was. We just like didn't see eye to eye on stuff. Right?

Scott Benner 8:25
Okay, so But now you're with him? I know this is about your son. We'll get to at some point. But, uh, you get with your father. How old are you now?

Sarah 8:37
I was 14. So I lived with him for like the last six months of his life.

Scott Benner 8:43
Oh, holy. Really? Oh, I didn't mean to curse. That's terrible. Let me make a note about where I curse so I can go back later. I've learned that if I make a note, it's easier for me in the editing side. Only took me seven years to figure that out. That's how badly I can't read my own writing. I was like, it seems like a problem, but I'll try it. Oh, I'm sorry. I know. That's probably a long time ago. But that's terrible.

Sarah 9:10
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was terrible because i He was definitely getting worse while I was living with him, I think is I mean, just looking back now knowing what I know about diabetes. I think his blood sugar was just like really hard to manage for him. And he didn't tell me anything about it. And my mom hadn't told me anything about it. So you know, I was just living with this person who was who had I think a lot of I mean, I think his blood sugar was just either high or low. There was definitely one time I remember when he got really low and I had to call I had to call 911 Because he was near unconsciousness. But again, like they came and they you know got a sugars backup and then Was it like we never talked about it? Or he never said, you know, like, if I have low blood sugar, I need you to do this, this and this. There was no glucagon there is just, you know, he didn't know everything. Yeah, no idea. Yeah.

Scott Benner 10:13
Would that have been the early 90s? About that time?

Sarah 10:17
Yes, that would have been like 9192.

Scott Benner 10:21
Would be nice if you would acknowledge how amazing it was that I just did that. But you don't have

Sarah 10:26
Yeah, very good math.

Scott Benner 10:29
It's not the math that you should be impressed with. It's that I remembered how old you are and what year it was. And they see y'all don't know me well enough. I'm just telling you is a major accomplishment. Just now when I yanked out of my head. That was the early 90s. Let's say your dad had diabetes at a time. That is just, you know, before everything, he was probably using regular and mph, when he started, I'm guessing he did you know if he even switched to a faster acting, or would you even have no way of knowing that?

Sarah 11:00
No. And knowing that, no, I remember him taking his blood sugar, like doing finger pokes. And then I definitely remember him injecting himself, you know, into his thigh or into stomach. But I have no idea what kind of insulin he was using or how often he was injecting or anything like that.

Scott Benner 11:16
Okay. All right. Well, then, we fast forward till two years ago. How long has it been since your father's passed?

Sarah 11:27
Let's see. He passed on July 6, and this would have been I'm 30 years ago.

Scott Benner 11:34
Wow. Okay. Yeah. I'm gonna get off this right now. But you were alone with him when he died.

Sarah 11:41
I was not at his house. I was actually on a road trip with my mom. And he. He thought he had the flu. And he'd called into work and let his business partner know that he wasn't feeling well. And and then he didn't show up for work the next day, and his business partner thought something was wrong and and found him.

Scott Benner 12:04
And that road trip was called Rumble in the Jungle part three or something you did you guys. Was there a boxing poster that went along with it? disagreeing in a car park. Right. Okay, I have one last question. Did your father's passing bring you and your mom closer?

Sarah 12:27
Um, let's see. You know, it forced us to live together again, which I think ultimately made us kind of have to get along a little bit better. But you know, my dad, my dad's passing was really sudden, he was in really good shape. He had just done like a, I don't know, 300 mile bike race. It was just really? Oh, it wasn't. It was huge surprise. I remember him dropping me off at our house and waving goodbye. And he he looked fine. He looked really healthy. So it was definitely it was hard. It was you know, that was a really hard time.

Scott Benner 13:13
But I mean, he's probably in decay half the time. He's probably ripped. Right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I know. That's a weird way to think about it. But if he's blood sugar's were high a lot. He probably didn't have any body fat. He probably looked lean and healthy. And yeah, people didn't understand at the time wouldn't see it like that. Okay. Well, so I appreciate you giving me that context. Because for me, I mean, understanding a little bit about what we're going to talk about here, I would think a lot of that colors, how you feel when as far as diagnosed. So I guess let's jump to that. Then. Were there any signs? Did you ever think yourself? Wow, somebody might get diabetes? One day my dad had it. Was there anything like that in your head prior?

Sarah 13:53
Yeah, I mean, I remember him saying that it skips generations. So like, in the back of my head, it was always kind of like this could happen. But the interesting thing is that it's something I've reflected on quite a bit since as has been diagnosed is, you know, you go to those Well Child checkups, and they asked for your family history, almost like every time you go to those and not one time, did any of his pediatrician say to me, Hey, you know, you have diabetes in your family and like, these would be the signs that you would be need to be aware of if your kid developed diabetes, because I didn't know what they were, you know, in my head, I had an idea of what diabetes looked like. And I didn't know what to look for. Like, my kid would be really thirsty and peeing a lot and lose weight. And, you know, these would be the other signs and symptoms. So it was like I knew it, but I wasn't. I didn't know what to look for, I guess.

Scott Benner 14:51
Yeah. Do you think you seem like a reasonable person? Sarah, I'm gonna ask you a question. Not that other people. By the way, if you've been on the podcast previously, I didn't ask you this question. It's not because you didn't seem reasonable. But it just popped into my head. Do you think we expect too much out of other people? Like because of their?

Sarah 15:13
I do think that we sometimes expect too much out of other people. Absolutely. Okay. And I, oh, yeah, no, no, I'm sorry. Good. And I think because because of our experience as rolling into decay so quickly, it just was, like, really rapid. I feel like it's one of those things, that's pretty easy. Like, you know, we have all the markers like, now, when you take your kid to the, to the pediatrician, or whatever they give him like a depression screening, that could be done for diabetes, just as easily, right? You could say to a parent, like, Hey, here's the three main symptoms of your child developing diabetes that you should look for, and it would be like a two minute conversation.

Scott Benner 15:56
So I don't know how that ends up happening. If the diabetes, you know, American diabetes Association has to make that a priority with the Pediatric Society. I don't know how like, because you're right. I mean, anybody who's got kids in the last least 10 years knows that at every well checkup the doctors like So how have you been? Like you just suddenly, like, they get real friendly with the kid? You're like, what are we doing now? Like, you can't beat my child? Like, where's this going? Like, what are your interests? Like, oh, man, what's up? Just hit him in the name look in his ear, you know, but then you realize pretty quickly, they're trying to find out if the kids depressed? I don't imagine that. You know, that wasn't something they always did, like. So you're saying at the end of that? And is there been any, you know, odd thirst issues? Have you lost weight recently, mood changes, like stuff like that? I wonder if the thing that gets me about it is like, I think it's important, you think it's important. But how many kids are there in the planet versus how many of them get diabetes? And if we're going to screen for that, like, what else are we going to screen for? Like, does your well visit become a nine hour? You know, three part interview at some point like, well, you don't I mean, like, where do they stop? I guess, when when they're adding things? I'm not against it. I'm just trying to think of it in a bigger way.

Sarah 17:21
Yeah, no, I can totally appreciate that. And I think, you know, even if you just had that conversation with families that have diabetes in their family history, you could, you know, reduce the number of conversations you're having, right? Like, we know that there's some genetic component to it. So even that right would catch a bunch of families, but not like all the families.

Scott Benner 17:46
Yeah. Wonder if there's not like us. 23andme or one of those services? I've heard of them. Yeah. So I did it. My wife made me do it. If I'm being honest, it wasn't even I did it. Like it was a Christmas present for me, like worst Christmas present ever. Like I opened up a box and like, what is it? She's like, it's a tube you're gonna spit into him like, oh, great, Merry Christmas. Because I'm adopted, and she wanted anyway, not the point. The point is, is that since I've used it, I opted into answering other questions. And every once in a while, I get an email from them. And it just asks like 10 or 11 questions and it it screens you for like this certain thing. And I'm like, as I was listening to you and thinking about the problem, I'm just like, that might be a good fix for this. Like, what if your kid attrition just send out a link once a while you just click through some stuff real quick. And yeah, like they get back to you. I'm a genius is what I just figured out. Yeah. You just figured it out. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. I'm being underpaid, sir.

So what are the first signs for Azur then?

Sarah 18:49
Let's see. So he was drinking more water. Although we had when he started to get sick, we were in Costa Rica. And the intention was that we were going to be there for many months and travel around. So he was drinking more water and was definitely paying a little bit more. And it made perfect sense to me because we were essentially in a jungle and it was really, really hot. And you know, yeah, everybody drinks more water when they're hot.

Scott Benner 19:23
Trust me, if you were in Antarctica, you'd think oh, he's wearing these these incredibly tight, heavy clothes. You would have found another way to like, like,

Sarah 19:31
justify it.

Scott Benner 19:33
What everybody's brain does, but because you imagine if our brains immediately jumped to oh my gosh, I saw a thing that's slightly different than yesterday. I probably have an incurable disease. Like we'd be pretty crippled as a society if ever Yeah, mind jump to that right away. So you see the thirst. I have to ask first. You were in Costa Rica.

Sarah 19:58
We were in Costa Rica. Yeah. So we have I'd always wanted to live abroad with my kids. And we just have this like window that opened up. And I thought if we don't go and do this right now, we're never going to have one of these windows again. And so we left the states at the beginning of April, with the intention that we would be there until through August and we were going to move every four weeks, so we would live in like several of the microclimates down there. So we got there in the beginning of April, and as Ezra was diagnosed April 23. So we've been there a little over three weeks. And and yeah, and he, when we got to Costa Rica, he had no symptoms, like everything was perfectly fine. He didn't start drinking more water until, I don't know, maybe a week or 10 days before he was diagnosed.

Scott Benner 20:50
That's 2019 Correct? Yes. What's it like being diagnosed in a different place than where you're used to living? The GM? Assuming healthcare seems different? There's probably language barriers. Unless

Sarah 21:03
you Yeah, yes. Yeah. So I don't speak Spanish. So that definitely makes communicating with medical professionals very challenging. It was, you know, initially, he was so so sick, that I was just, you know, the information was more just about is he going to survive, and the diabetes was a shock, but it was not the biggest shock in all of what was going on at that time. So definitely, like took a while for the, you know, like, okay, he's gonna live with a chronic illness to kind of sink in. Initially, when we got to the clinic in the closest little town that we were living by, he was, he had cerebral edema. He had his Ph was 6.8. He was unconscious, he was in kidney failure. He was really, really, really sick.

Scott Benner 22:03
Wow, how quickly did that come on?

Sarah 22:07
It came on. Let's see honest. On Sunday, I thought he was like developing maybe a little bit of a stomach flu. And then he was unconscious by like, middle of the night Monday.

Scott Benner 22:22
My gosh. Looking back prior to that, was he losing weight or anything?

Sarah 22:28
He was, yeah, you know, I have pictures that I look back on now and can see it like he doesn't, you know, he looks like he's lost weight. He looks he looks sick. Looking now that I can you know, now that I know what was happening, essentially, I think that he because we were in this really new environment. And but he'd gotten a bunch of mosquito bites. And so I think his body was just, it just developed really quickly. It was you know, by the time we got to the children's hospital there, he was in septic shock. And he was just real sick.

Scott Benner 23:01
It makes you feel any better a number of weeks before we realize the Arden had type one. I saw her running around in a hotel room we were in, in a diaper. And all I said to Kelly was are we raising her to be like a heroin chic model? Like there you go.

Sarah 23:21
That does make you feel a little bit better. Yeah, cuz I cute. I think like how on earth did I not notice that he had lost so much weight, but again, like I had no context for it. So it was like, Well, I guess as we're traveling and yeah, he's drinking all this water.

Scott Benner 23:34
How many children do you have? Two children? Is he the oldest, the youngest?

Sarah 23:39
He is the youngest. His sister was with us and she's 10 years older than him. So there's a big age gap between the two of them.

Scott Benner 23:46
Okay. Are they? Like, I don't know the word we do it backwards. What the hell? So what I want like I'm trying to find out if if one of them's like a step. brother or sister but Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Should I said natural brothers.

Sarah 24:03
I'm like, like a half sibling.

Scott Benner 24:06
Paternal. What but if I wanted to just Alright, hold on, sir. Let's do some basic language. If I wanted to just ask you. Are they related? By blood through both of you your husband? What would I have said? Why can't I take that? Paternal? I don't know. You don't know. Either. You I don't know. Yeah, your picture. So it makes me feel better, but you don't know. And by the way, you the emails of people are like the word you meant like, hi, thank you. I appreciate it. When you guys tell me how wrong I am. Thank you. Okay, so they are so are they both yours? Or is the older sibling your husband's? They're both mine. Both yours. Gotcha. Look at you. hooking a guy with a kid. Easy problem for Sarah.

Hey, listen joke if you want, that's a heavy lift, right? I'm not making this up. If you ever met men, they have a hard time taking care of the kids they made. You start tasking them with paying for someone else's kid, trust me to have you left. I know what I'm talking about. Stop it. Let's not pretend. Okay, so were you married prior?

Sarah 25:27
No, gotcha. You

Scott Benner 25:28
just did that to make your mom mad. Yeah, it

Sarah 25:31
was another thing that I can really do to make her mad.

Scott Benner 25:37
I have no idea if I'm right or wrong, but it's just hilarious. So it doesn't really matter. Okay, so does she have any markers? Have you checked her? Since all this has happened?

Sarah 25:48
Yeah, she has no markers. Okay,

Scott Benner 25:51
good. How long did you think he might die? During that situation? How many days until you felt more comfortable with his outcome?

Sarah 26:04
Oh, it was a lot of this. Like, initially, when we got there to the Children's Hospital, they said, they said he wouldn't make it. They said, actually, what they said was, when I got in there, they said, If you the, you know, Doctor, the ER doc was like, if you're a person of faith, you need to start praying. And then they said that, you know, they, it was just like a matter of waiting to see if SPH came up. And then once it was clear that his he was a little bit more stable. They said he would probably live but he was gonna have extensive brand damage. Oh, which was very, very scary. And then it was probably three and a half weeks, maybe three weeks. He was in ICU for four weeks. So about that about three weeks, it became relatively clear that he was going to Well, definitely that he was going to live and that he was probably not going to have extensive brain damage. Like at that point, he was able to squeeze her hand and he was semi conscious some of the time. And responsive. You know, like I could tell His personality was still in there. And so, but it was a while. I mean, it was definitely there were weeks of every day going to the hospital and just not knowing what was going to happen that day.

Scott Benner 27:33
You have to know that this is one of the moments where I think maybe I should know more about what we're going to talk about before we start as I laughed for the first 25 minutes, and then you tell me that I'm like, Ah, there's a striking tone shift isn't there? Sorry, how much? How many times during those three weeks? Did you think I really wish we didn't come to Costa Rica.

Sarah 27:58
Um, I mean, oddly, I felt like he was in really good hands there. And so it was hard to be there because mostly because of the language barrier. And, you know, we didn't have like our community or people but he, I felt like he was in good hands. I had a lot of faith in the doctor that was kind of had taken his case over I think the doctor, his name was Dr. Pres. And he really took us under his wing and I think felt pretty challenged by as just like he kept saying as was medical presentation is challenging. But I think he like was really enjoyed treating Ezra and so this the medical system down there are so different and just the way that people relate to one another is so different. It was it was like very comforting sometimes to be in that country because people are so warm and supportive and loving, that I would go to the hospital and there would just always be people around and people like very caring people. So I tried not to think about why are we here and why are we not in the states and they'd be so much better if we were in the States because I just couldn't really I couldn't get we couldn't get back to the States at that point. So it just felt like my energy was better served just to be really present to Ezra and like, helping him heal and survive.

Scott Benner 29:31
Well, I want to you know, I'd like to say that just in case I came off wrong. What I meant was is that like the exactly everything you said like not that it was like a place where they're like oh, medicine What's that? Like but you know, that just that you didn't have people with you the language barrier like being far from home like that kind of stuff, but it sounds like you handled that part really well. They knew he had type one immediately right like this length of time was because of how severe is the Kay was

here you are listening to the Juicebox Podcast settled in having a good time listening to Sarah story about Ezra, and you're thinking to yourself, I am going to get an insulin pump, I definitely am going to get an answer. I don't know what kind of insulin pump to get, but I'm going to get getting on the pot Omni pod.com forward slash juice box, that's where you go to learn more about the Omni pod dash. That's it, that's all you really have to do. The rest of what I say after this is just filler. It's because the company is paid for this time and they deserve my full, unadulterated attention. I'm going to give you details about the Omni pod dash tubeless we mentioned it, I'll say it one more time, because it's a big deal. completely self contained. This little Omni pod is you just it is slap it on, right? It's gotta be a little more careful. And that put your, you put it on the body. And itself inserts actually completely self contained me in the insulins inside of it already. So no tubing that goes back to a cartridge, no having to clip the cartridge onto your belt or stuff in your bra. I'm not editing that out wherever else you got to stick. Getting my full effort tonight on tickets, or wherever else you would have to stick those cartridges for those other tube insulin pumps. You don't have to do that with the Omni pod. Because it's tubeless the Omni pod comes off every 72 hours, you just put a new one on, right? Gone. Brand new one super simple to do. Takes I mean, we just did one two nights ago. I mean, if it took a minute and a half, I'd be surprised. I mean, we're very good at at this point, like changing on the pod, like a racecar tire like ran ran ran. It's like kind of done. But I'm a skilled professional you understand. In time you'll get it. Again, we're getting away from the point. The only pod is delicious, because you can swim with it. You can bathe with it, you can play the sports with it. You if you're an adult, you can make the puppy with it. There's no need to disconnect from your insulin. And that's important. Right? You know, we talked about this all the time on the podcast, really well defined, nicely balanced Basal insulin, you don't want to just disconnect for 45 minutes to take a bath or hour and a half to go swimming. You want to get your insulin with the Omni pod, you can what else have I told you? small handheld controller does not need to be near the pod constantly. Just like when you're like giving yourself instantly like hey, I'm gonna have 33 carbs and push button. It's like a Scott based on the stuff you put in doesn't really say any of this. But like you know, based on your settings, it'll say Oh 33 carbs is this much insulin, you just agree to it and you're on your way. The minute you push the button actually and agree to the insulin, you could take the PDF, that's the personal diabetes manager, the little handheld device, it's going to look like a like a little Android phone for the the Omni pod dash anyway, not the point like as soon as you send the signal to the pod, you could take the PDM and shoot it to the moon if you want it to use still get your Bolus. It's lovely really. My daughter has been using an omni pod every day since she was four years old. And she will be 18 this summer. I am I'm being completely honest, when I tell you that the Omni pod has been a friend to her. And I believe it may be to you as well. Omni pod.com forward slash juice box. If you heard about the Omni pod five, and you'd like to take a look on the pod.com forward slash juicebox five.

Sarah 34:07
Immediately when we got to the little clinic by the town we were living in. Like within probably five minutes, they said to me do you know he's a diabetic? And I was like No, he's not a diabetic and they're like, Yes, he is a diabetic. And that is when it all kind of sunk in that like okay, this is this is what's going on, right? He's having like a he's diabetic and this is something related to diabetes and then you know, I didn't understand at all like what was happening right? Like I thought okay, if you're diabetic, you take insulin and then the insulin, you know, fixes your blood sugar and then you're fine. But as soon as you initially was at the little clinic firehouse and then they had to transfer him to the hospital closest, and then from there, they transferred him to the Children's Hospital. In the capital, and it took us about, like, a full day to get from the little clinic to the Children's Hospital. And I talked to several doctors, you know, in the meantime, between hospitals and they all kept kind of just like, you know, re explaining it to me like, using DK, this isn't something that you can just like,

Scott Benner 35:21
pop, you know, real quick.

Sarah 35:22
Yeah, like this is gonna take a long time. It's very slow. It's, you know, he's very, very sick.

Scott Benner 35:27
How much of the the needing to travel Do you think impacted the situation early on?

Sarah 35:36
In terms of like having to

Scott Benner 35:37
get to the hospital like you? Oh,

Sarah 35:42
yeah, I mean, I don't know. That's a really good question. I haven't thought a lot about that. I don't I don't know. I mean, I obviously the sooner we could have gotten him. You know, kindergarten whose medical attention the better, but I don't know.

Scott Benner 36:04
Okay. I'm just wondering, what made the trip take so long?

Sarah 36:09
Oh, my goodness. So well, when we, when he was unconscious, we, you know, there's no like 911. So or maybe there is I don't know, I didn't know how to access it if there is. So we had to find somebody in the town we were living in to give us a ride up to the clinic, which was amazing. It was it ended up that there was like a guy working on a house right behind our house. And he spoke fluent English. And he had a motorcycle. And he went got a woman who had a minivan. And she was like there within three minutes. And he carried Ezra out into the van. And we got up to the clinic. And she scooped us out of my arms and ran him into the clinic and explained to them what was going on. And then we had to take a like a little ambulance from that clinic to the to the coast essentially. And then we had to get in a speedboat and go across a bay. And the water was really choppy that day. And so as is on like a stretcher, we're in an actual speedboat. And I'm holding on to the boat, and I'm watching as just like fly up every time we hit a bump, and like come back down into the stretcher. And then we got off the boat and got into the hospital there. And then they kind of reassessed and determined he needed to go to the Children's Hospital. And that was another couple hours to get there. So it was just a lot of traveling.

Scott Benner 37:43
I have to tell you, I thought at some point there'd be a donkey in the story. I didn't realize that's amazing. No, yeah, you might win weirdest diagnosis story, just I've said before, I don't have a trophy. But if I had one, I think you you could I could send it to you. So that's insane. That is absolutely insane. Your daughter's with you the entire time to

Sarah 38:06
know. So she came with us to the clinic. And they only allow one person in the ambulance. So she went back to our house. And then when we got to the hospital between the clinic and the Children's Hospital, they said to me, we have to take them to the Children's Hospital, but you can't come with us. We can't fit you in the ambulance. Because they I think they wanted to bring like an extra doctor. And so they said to me, you can walk down the street and there's a bus station down the street and in the at that bus station, you can get a bus and you can take the bus to the Capitol. And I was like, You gotta be kidding me. I'm not gonna not leaving my kids here. Like, I don't even know where the Children's Hospital is. And they were like, well, you don't have a choice. So this is what you have to do so. So when walk down the street, got on the bus, took the bus to the capital, I didn't know where to get off in the capital, because I didn't know where the Children's Hospital was. So it was like, some by some miracle, I actually ended up getting off at a stop, like within a mile of the Children's Hospital and got a cab and took it to the emergency room. And then when I walked into the emergency room, everyone kind of stopped and turned and looked at me. And you know, there I was, I think as was the only green girl in that hospital. So they all knew who I was. And at that point, I don't think they thought it was going to survive. So everything just like stopped. It was at that point it kind of really sunk in how sick he was because I could tell they were waiting for me. And you know, I just assumed the news wasn't good.

Scott Benner 39:47
Wow, that's crazy. I'm so sorry. That's a hell of a story. The number of weeks later when he was filming, how long did it take you? I'm assuming you you didn't pick up and start your trip over you got home after that?

Sarah 40:02
Yeah. So he was in the hospital there for nine weeks. And then he was stable enough to fly home. So we hopped on a plane and transferred him from the hospital there to the hospital here. And he was in the hospital here for about a week and a half and then discharged. And and yeah, and that was the end of our trip.

Scott Benner 40:23
I'm sorry, I just looked at your notes that you put in when you send in your I don't know what to call it. I don't even know how to explain to people how I get people on the show. But anyway, this entire time I've I felt I didn't realize are you not married? at all right now?

Sarah 40:38
I'm not married? No. So I was down there with my kids.

Scott Benner 40:40
Just just your kids. Yes. Holy hell. Just by yourself. Are you okay? Like?

Sarah 40:50
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, the whole. Obviously, this is was really, really hard. But he, I really thought we were going to lose them. And then I really thought he would survive, but he wouldn't be like the kid that I'd known. And he is thriving. And I feel so fortunate that he's alive and well. I'm okay. I mean, you know, he's a really, I mean, he's a really strong personality. He's really strong spirit. He always has been. So I'm not because of that. I think, you know, of course, he would survive something like this. He's a fighter. But yeah, we're doing good.

Scott Benner 41:40
Change your perspective on life at all? 1,000%. Yeah, like paint in your garage now and don't wear shoes and stuff like that.

Sarah 41:50
Don't sweat the small stuff? Yeah, just Life is short. You nothing's guaranteed. I, you know, the connection, I think there was like, maybe 15,000 people praying for him. I'm prior to him getting sick. I wouldn't say that I was a religious person. And then when he got sick, and you know, Costa Rica is a Catholic country. So there was a chapel in the hospital. And just a lot of the the most of the doctors and nurses down there would always tell me like, we're praying for him. We're praying for him. And it was just amazing, as people back home, heard that he was sick, just the outpouring of like, love and support. And I have a friend who has a connection to most of the Catholic communities on the west coast and a lot of the tribal Catholic communities and she had 1000s and 1000s of people praying for us, we and this just like, I would just hear about this. And people would send me messages how they had heard about Ezra and they had, they were praying for him. We were working with a woman in Australia who I don't know exactly how to describe, but kind of like a psychic, I guess. And that was really helpful. Just, it was just a solace. She would talk about how she thought as I was doing. And I know that all sounds kind of like hokey. But it really, I think, showed me the power of energy and connection and love in the universe and how transforming that can be. And not

Scott Benner 43:36
a way, not the way you thought prior to this.

Sarah 43:40
No, you know, I definitely thought you know, I in a long time. You know, I've been doing yoga and mindfulness for a very long time. And I'm a therapist. And so I definitely had kind of belief in the power of these things and the power of human connection, particularly, but I think this just really brought it to a whole new level for me that you know, we really have the capacity to impact one another through just the kind of positive energy that we send one another.

Scott Benner 44:19
I guess to just being in a different culture, like opens you up to their ideas, and then it works out. You think okay, well, cool. That worked.

Sarah 44:28
Yeah, totally. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, I mean, everyone's like, very positive down there. So I would, I would go to the hospital and they'd say, Oh, you know, like, his kidneys aren't working. And then they say, but don't worry, don't worry. We're gonna get it. We'll get this fixed. Don't worry. It's okay. So it's like, okay, well, I guess I'll try not to worry about that. We'll see what happens. Okay.

Scott Benner 44:53
Thanks. What's his recollection of this nine weeks?

Sarah 44:58
Does he He doesn't remember a lot of it she remember so after four weeks in ICU, he spent five weeks in the, like the endocrinology unit down there. Because when he was in ICU, he developed a really large, essentially a bed sore on his back. And it required, like a wound back and like surgeries every few days. So that really kept us in the country longer. I think if that would have been the case, things would have progressed a lot quicker, but he remembers that period a lot. And he not fondly. You know, yeah. Yeah. It wasn't fun for him.

Scott Benner 45:49
Nine years old. Wow. Okay. How are things now? Like? His? I mean, your home? Right. Your home? Yeah. So you've been you've been here for quite some time. But how does he manage? Actually, what did they give you there? And what do you have now?

Sarah 46:05
Sure. So there they gave us. Let's see, we had long acting and short acting. All injections? No. And I think just like, we were just doing finger pokes. So it was pretty basic. And then when we got home, we kept doing that. I think he got to CGM right away. We got the Dexcom. Pretty quick after we got back to the States. And then now he's on the T slim and the Dexcom. And and that's been great for us.

Scott Benner 46:37
So using their algorithm.

Sarah 46:39
Yes, yeah. Control. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Benner 46:42
And you're from California. Right. Like you have a California accent? I don't know. I'm from Washington State, Washington State. It's the same thing like that side. I guess. I know. West Coast. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? By by the way, what I mean by like, California accent is like, you know, you enunciate all your words, and yeah. pronounce things correctly, you know, stuff like that. Sound like I imagine we're all supposed to sound I don't know. But okay, so West Coast, and you're in the middle of country right now, for reasons we haven't talked about. It's not important. And he's using pumping now. And do you think that has his story up until now impacted him? Or is he just a regular 11 year old kid with diabetes is probably like, not that interested in it? And, you know, like, you don't mean like that. Is there? Yeah. I I'm trying to, I think what I'm asking is, does the did the experience bring a depth of understanding to him or just to you?

Sarah 47:51
Gosh, that's a good question. I mean, I certainly have tried. My hope is that it is that way for him? Because it was such a, you know, big experience for him. But I think so. I mean, he's, you know, I think he has he's not naive, right to what life can send your way. And I, I do think that kind of shows. He has never really been, he's always been a kid. That's been a little bit. I mean, she's just a pretty wild spirit. He always has been. So I would say that he. I don't know that he's burden necessarily, but just that he's seen something that most kids is hmm, I mean, honestly, most people haven't. Right.

Scott Benner 48:49
Yeah. I wonder because I find, as my kids get older, that some of the things that happened to us that I thought were so impactful, impacted me or Kelly, but not them specifically. Like it's just different. So yeah, when they're kids, you know, like, they don't see things the same way. Or they don't have the same experiences. So things don't like impact them the same. Like, you know, I grew up like incredibly broke. And so when something goes good for us, I'm like, really impressed by it. I'm like, I can't believe we did this, you know? Yeah, my kids are like, this is our baseline expectation for you people you understand that? Right? Like, it's like, well, you know, had you had you lived in a situation where in the absolute worst part of the summer, you hung a sheet between the kitchen and the living room to keep the cold air in the one room we could afford to air condition, you'd see how exciting this is, but Right, they don't have that context. And so, you know, I used to sleep on the floor in the room that we could afford to put a window air conditioner in in the summertime. And my kids are just like, they don't have that experience. You know, it's one simple little example. So I was just wondering if he did? Do you guys ever talk about it? Or is it kind of in the past?

Sarah 50:05
No, you know, I really tried to talk about it with him. Just to keep filling it in for him, I think, you know, I think it's important that we talk about it because I want it to be. I want him to remember it, and not like the scary parts necessarily, but just like that this experience happened, and that it was, obviously like a really big deal for all of us. Typically, when we talk about it, we talk about it with his sister. And we'll just like tell stories, you know, it's not the nitty gritty of like, the medical stuff so much, there were just like, 1000 just wacky things that happened in that, you know, time that we were down there. Hilarious things. And I know, that probably sounds really strange, given the severity of what was going on. But, I mean, it was surreal, honestly, what was happening? So, you know, we definitely talked about it. And but I, you know, I agree with you that, like, this is all he knows. So like, this is just his life. And I've really tried to just make it as normal for us as possible, you know, like, not be overly anxious about his diabetes and not make too big of a deal out of it. Because I just want him to feel like he gets to be a normal kid.

Scott Benner 51:24
What was his understanding of your father's life prior to diabetes?

Sarah 51:30
There wasn't really, I mean, I think now we talked about it a lot like he, I, you know, aside from my dad being in as for being a diabetic and having that in common, my dad was, I think my dad and Ezra would have had a lot of other things in common. And so we talk a lot about, like, how great it would be if my dad were here, because my dad could, you know, be with us, and they could talk about diabetes, and my dad would understand it, that they could go fishing together, which is something they both love to do, and they could go sailing together and all these other things. We don't,

Scott Benner 52:03
I didn't mean to cut you off. You don't, you can keep

Sarah 52:07
I you know, really steer clear from like, you know, he died in middle age from diabetic complications, because I mean, the like, you know, as is probably going to live a long, happy life, because his diabetic management is going to be a lot better than my dad's in the technologies a lot better than it was in the 80s. So

Scott Benner 52:28
right. Now, I'm just like, wondering, like, not that you would say it this way, but I mean, I don't know how a kid wouldn't hear. Oh, I got the thing that killed my grandfather, apparently. Yay. Yeah. Give me like, Sue. I think that's, it sounds like what you're doing is introducing that idea. Not at all or very slowly. I mean, at some point, you're going to tell him I would imagine but I mean, I agree with i It sounds like you're doing it the right way, in my opinion. But I just was tricked trying to figure out like, like, because people could get dramatic. You don't? Yeah, don't seem like that. But I could see somebody Scarlett O'Hara, you know, forearm on the forehead. Oh, my God as her this is what killed my dad. Like, you don't mean like, I can see people. You don't seem like that. But some people are. And you know, yeah, they kind of lean into that, that sort of stuff. But yeah, I don't see why. He's too young, in my opinion to put that on him. Because the idea that this is a different world now management wise, and your outcome is very likely not going to be anything like that. I don't know if he could hear that after you told him the first part. So make sense to me. What do you do for a living?

Sarah 53:42
I'm a therapist. See, you

Scott Benner 53:44
know how to talk to people. Are you working right now? Sir? Am I being manipulated?

Sarah 53:50
This is actually a session I'm gonna send you a bill.

Scott Benner 53:53
Is this the Kelly send you what's going on? Am I crazy? Tell me now imagine that'd be a bot by the way. That'd be genius. Kelly did that she doesn't care that a lot of effort do you uh, does your you know I ask everybody who's a therapist this but does your profession help you in your personal life or not? Really?

Sarah 54:22
Definitely. It helps me Yeah, I think you know, just in this situation with him like, acknowledging my own like anxiety and worry and fear and being really trying to be really mindful at least of not projecting that onto him and not doing like you said like the Scarlett O'Hara it's We're doomed. Yeah. I think that's been really helpful.

Scott Benner 54:46
Are you smiling right now like I am imagining younger people going, Scarlett who what the. The irony is there's I've never seen that movie. I just know the cultural reference There's the internet for you. You don't actually have to know things to use them correctly. I don't know what to call this episode. Because I want to work as his name into it so badly. But all I have is the name of that band. And that doesn't make any sense. So

Sarah 55:24
yeah, I look forward to hearing what you decide to college.

Scott Benner 55:27
Yeah, well, it's gonna have something to do with a speedboat, I'm pretty sure because for anyone who's like, Listen, I'm gonna say something right now I'm not embarrassed by I love survivor, the TV show. I have seen a great many of the episodes. And there was this one, see if nobody's watched this show, at the end of the time on the island that they're on. They have some sort of a, I don't know, it's not important, but they leave with this kind of like a bucket full of votes, right. But then the votes are counted back on the mainland later in a live show. And so they used to try to do these weird transitions where it would look like Jeff Probst would be walking out of the island and right onto the stage, you know, in California where they would tell you who won one year, he jumped on a jet ski and rode away. And I laughed for like, it was so ridiculous that I laughed the entire time it was happening. And yet, that's what I thought you were telling me that your son was on a speedboat. Like, because all I could think was, well, that's unexpected. And

Sarah 56:31
yeah, it was when when the ambulance was driving to the coast. And it was like clear, we were gonna, you know, go down to the dock. I was, like, totally racking my brain. I'm like, what is happening right now? Yeah. Are we getting on the ferry? And then, all of a sudden, I realized like, oh, no, we're gonna get on that little speedboat. And sure enough, we got on the Speedboat.

Scott Benner 56:56
Your son's like, I can't believe I'm laughing but he's on death's door, obviously. Right. I would be the only thing stopping you from going? What is happening? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You don't fit me and I thought, I swear to God, I thought you're gonna say you wrote on the roof of the ambulance at one point, I was like,

Sarah 57:23
if they would have offered me that option, I probably would have taken it and absolutely done that rather than be sent down the street to find a bus to a city where I had no idea where the hospital was in

Scott Benner 57:36
a place. You don't speak the language. Exactly. Yeah, I would have joked about it at the time. But you went right into how everybody was staring at you when you walk into the hospital. So Well, now's not the time in this story to say this, but that really is frightening. You are incredibly, like either you're high or you're really healthy. But it's super early. Well, it's not super early, where you're at. He could be a little loaded right now, I guess. But I just don't like how did you? I guess I really do want to know, like, what did you do for yourself? Like, once you were home and settled and he was okay. Like, did you address this for yourself? Or did you do Yeah,

Sarah 58:19
yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would say over the last couple years, it's like, kind of the, the, I don't know, settling in and kind of dealing with the trauma has been a big priority for me. I, you know, I have a really robust yoga practice. And I do a lot of kind of just sitting in meditation or mindfulness. I am a runner I am, I have a fantastic therapist, I have close friends that, you know, I really can talk to and lean on when I need support. I have family in the area. My sister's an just an amazing support system. My daughter's incredible. So, you know, I think it's been I mean, I do think one of the challenges has been COVID Because that was like we'd gotten back to the states in July and it kind of felt like life was just settling in back to a little bit of like a new normal for us and then COVID head and that's been I wouldn't say it's been particularly challenging. Like, with as you know, we kind of got things sorted out. So he was able to, like continue to go to school and I tried to keep things as normal and for him as possible, particularly since he was just, you know, newly diagnosed and had been through so much. But just working as a therapist over the last year and a half has been pretty intense because it's been such such struggle for so many people living through the pandemic.

Scott Benner 1:00:03
I don't usually get the episodes. But today's September 2 2021. My son went back to college five days ago, and this is Arden's first day of high school, and where she's in the building, so, Arden This is Arden's first day as a senior. But she's, uh, wow, she's only been to high school for a year and a couple of months. But she should be the beginning of her fourth here. My son, yes, same situation. My son is a senior in college, who's only been at school for three semesters, I think, Wow. You know, so, and I'll tell you this morning, she left and Kelly was still asleep. And I sat in the living room, I am not a like, I, I have to examine myself a little better. I don't enjoy my home, like I don't like I'm not a person who just sits in like, it's like, oh, I have a living room. Like I sit in the living room. If I'm doing something in the living room. I don't I don't know how to put what I'm saying exactly. Other than I'm usually doing something. And so I just sat down. And I was like, I'm gonna sit here for a few minutes. And the dogs were looking at me like, are you going to feed me? And I was like, huh, just yet? I need a second. Like, and I think was like, I can't believe they're finally back at school. And it's been so freaking long. You know? Like, it's, I mean, what is it? March to March and April? May? June, July? It's, it's, it's a year and a half? Yeah. So. And then I didn't have anything crazy happening in the middle of it like you did? You know, so? Geez. Like, goodness, I have other questions. You have a couple more minutes? Yeah, I do. Excellent. How are things going management wise? Like? Do you listen to this podcast? Like, how are you here? Yeah,

Sarah 1:01:51
so I found your podcast, Ezra, we were when we were in Costa Rica, he went to the surgery, like it felt like a lot. He went every few days for probably four weeks. So and I would just have to sit there and wait for him. And like, the worst part of waiting down there was feeling like I couldn't do anything. You know, I just had to wait. So I started listening to your podcast. And I started at the very beginning. And, you know, I don't know how many years ago that was that you started but it was, it was awesome. It was like a connection to the diabetes community. And it also felt like, okay, at some point, like, our lives are going to be normal enough, again, where I'm going to be thinking about packing low snacks, and, you know, managing his blood sugar numbers, and what kind of pump we're going to use and all those kinds of things. So that's when I found it. And then yeah, I mean, you know, right now, I Well, over the last, I would say, since we kind of got back and got on the pump, my I keep wanting more information from the doctors that we work with, about how to do better how to get as a one C lower, or, you know, just like all the nuances kind of managing diabetes. And I just often get told when we go to the endocrinologist, like you're doing a good job, he's in range enough to say once he looks pretty good. What I've really appreciated about your podcast is I feel like you dig in and really provide more kind of information about like, what it means to live with diabetes, and how, you know, even Pre-Bolus thing like all the kind of details that go into doing that correctly. So it's been really informative. It's been awesome. I thank you. I really appreciate what you do. Oh, no,

Scott Benner 1:03:45
that's my pleasure. I just I couldn't like you're, you're so focused on the story, which was terrific, by the way. I just was like, I don't even know how you ended up here. I just looked. And South American generals, not you could imagine, because I'm assuming the language barrier is, you know, would stop my podcast from being too big in South America. It's, you know, and I'm looking like through Honduras, Guatemala, like, there's nobody list like, you know, there's no one really listening in there. There's downloads, but they're not of any great consequence. And then all of a sudden, you just kind of keep banging down, then you get to Costa Rica, and I'm like, Oh, well, there's all Sarah's downloads.

I mean, it's you and somebody else, but I don't think too many people is what I'm saying. But that's really, that's really interesting. And I'm glad you just you just jumped on. Were you a podcast person prior to this?

Unknown Speaker 1:04:44
A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:04:46
think the search there.

Sarah 1:04:48
Yeah. I mean, I kind of knew like, what I was anticipating what was gonna happen was we were gonna get you I mean, even this is true in the States, you know, like you go, maybe your kid SDK and you go in and you're in ICU. For a couple of days or whatever, and then you go home and they're like, here's a book, and a phone number to call good luck. And I, you know, kind of knew that was gonna happen, or I thought that might happen. So I was really just like looking for more information. And I think what I also appreciated about your podcast is it's very just like, Well, I mean, the scope of it's pretty amazing, but just it's really easy to listen to you like you. Present. It's just it's, I don't know, I'm amazing.

Scott Benner 1:05:33
I hear what you're trying to say. It's hard to get out. Yeah, it's weird to say. But yeah, I'm like, I'm terrific. I mean, there's no way around it. So sorry. You were struggling. I just I felt bad. Thank you for feeling about it. Yeah, you're fine. Um, yeah. Listen, the information is one thing, but it's delivered by it by like, God damn, delightful person. Yes. I mean, you heard me come up with what I fixed that healthcare problem in the first five minutes of the show. No one, no one's gonna listen to me, but doesn't matter. Oh, no, I appreciate that. I do. I mean, it's so I hope you understand that, from my perspective, it's crazy to think that that was your story. And at some point, I intersected with it. You know what I mean? Like, that's a real, like, it blows my mind a little bit, honestly, you know, joking aside, yeah, that I made a thing in this room. And you were going through all that in Costa Rica. And it found you and sounds like it was valuable for you. Like, that's just crazy to me. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It sounds obvious, like, Oh, you made a podcast because you thought people would hear it. And the internet, you know, it works everywhere, basically. And but it's not that obvious that you don't start something like this and think one day, this person is going to decide to take a trip with their children, and all this is going to happen. And at one point, you'll be sitting in a hospital like listening to me ramble on about diabetes. It's just very, it's cool. Like, I don't know, another way to put it doesn't need a big word. It's just pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Excellent. Have we not talked about anything that you hope to speak about?

Sarah 1:07:15
I think we hit on most of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think I yeah, he's doing really well. Now. We had a lot of surgeries once he got back to the States. And for the most part, those

Scott Benner 1:07:29
WhatsApp for the bed sores.

Sarah 1:07:31
That sores and when he was in Costa Rica, he had a colostomy put in so that was no fun and very happy with that got taken down. But most I mean, since Yeah, like he's all I think we have most of the surgeries behind us. And he's doing really well right now.

Scott Benner 1:07:53
You at some point? Had to wake your your son woke up, and you had to say to him, Hey, buddy, you have diabetes, and you're crapping in the bag now, and like don't worry, though, we're still in Costa Rica.

Sarah 1:08:07
It's cool. Oh, my God. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:08:13
Mommy. All right, we're gonna jump from microclimate to microclimate. It's gonna be amazing. It'd be an experience of a lifetime to go home and tell all your friends about all the love of instead, this bag here smells really bad. And it's so bad. Don't worry. We'll take it off when we get home. Maybe? Yeah, well. You were the worst travel agent in the world, sir.

Sarah 1:08:48
Yes, sir, always tells me he's never going back. Like that's fair. Go back.

Scott Benner 1:08:53
I wouldn't even want to go to a warm weather climate. It probably gets a little hinky when the temperature goes above 85. He's like, Oh my gosh. I'm sorry. He doesn't have any other health all on a second. Goddamnit. Prior to diabetes, he didn't have any other health issues. No, no. Super healthy kid. And he doesn't now.

Sarah 1:09:20
No, no other health issues. Just the diabetes. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:23
gotcha. I didn't know. It was like you took Tiny Tim to Costa Rica. I wasn't sure what was. But um, and does your daughter have a hippie name? Like your son or no? You don't? Really? So yeah, just Yes.

How far up in Washington like, like Seattle.

Sarah 1:09:49
Let's see. I was raised in Seattle, but we were living in North Central Washington and a pretty rural area of Washington State. So that's part of the reason that we came back When we came back to the States, we came to the Midwest was my family's here. And we needed to be really close to the hospital and kind of the medical team for him. So it's been great to be here because we've gotten great medical care for him.

Scott Benner 1:10:16
Have you ever reconnected with the health care workers in Costa Rica told them how he's doing? Or is that would that be hard? Yeah.

Sarah 1:10:23
Yeah. No, every year around the anniversary of his diagnosis, I exchanged emails with his, the PICU doctor that treated him Dr. Perez. And just, you know, send him a picture and tell him like few highlights of the year as did ski team last year, or, you know, just letting him know kind of how great he's doing and how much I appreciate everything that they did for us down there. You guys

Scott Benner 1:10:48
are probably on their Chamber of Commerce website. They're like, Look, if you come here and get really super sick, we'll save your life. You could save you travel insurance. You don't need travel insurance. We got your back. I can see the headline now. Oh, my God, Sarah is the worst. Travel. Yeah, it might be the name of the I don't know. I love the speedboat thing. Well, it's hard to get away from me. Yeah. I wouldn't give anything to see that speedboat moment, because I'm assuming it's both hilarious and frightening at the same time from a third party perspective. Yeah. Like if I was hovering over top of it. I think I'd be like, Oh my god, this is horrifying. But look at that kid bouncing around on the Speedboat. And that woman looks very confused.

Sarah 1:11:32
Yeah. Yeah, I would say that was the majority of the experience once he got sick was like, just like, shock. And there. I mean, yeah. Like, here I am on the speedboat and my kids flying up and down. And the thing is, is like, you know, for the folks on the speedboat with us, like this is perfectly normal. So they're, no one's like making any big deal of the fact that he's, you know, in the air two feet every time we go over a giant wave. It's just, and I'm looking around, like, don't we need to worry about this? And no, we don't

Scott Benner 1:12:09
have your fancy American lady who's not going on a speedboat to get to a hospital. That's all I got. This was like a real life episode of The Amazing Race. Has anyone the viewers, has anyone I just for a minute thought I was talking to everybody. Have you ever seen that reality show?

Sarah 1:12:28
I hadn't that I know of it.

Scott Benner 1:12:31
Yeah. I mean, it's just, it occurs to me now. That's exactly what was happening. They were like, okay, the day starting Sara, you need to get to the hospital before your son dies. Good luck figuring it out. You don't speak any English. Here's a rudimentary map, like, you know, and then at the end, you get there. And there's this, this guy with a weird accent who says, You're the first person to arrive, then I guess you get to stay in the show another day. You get to live. It's not a perfect game show if I'm being honest. But but the entire situation feels like that. Like, go faster. Go faster, go faster. I don't know where I am. I don't know which way to go. I don't speak the language. Like, that's a crazy. That's just a crazy, crazy story. I am so glad you came on. Thank you so much for reaching out. By the way, other people listening have crazy stories. These are the things I'm interested in, like, like, what are you doing? Get on the show? There is done the right thing here today, you understand? What did make you one? I'm gonna let you go in a second. But what made you want to do this?

Sarah 1:13:35
You know, partially to just raise awareness about DKA I think. I mean, I know in the States, it's not as lethal as it is other places. But I had no idea what I was looking at. Right? I like, and maybe that's how I I'm assuming that's how it is for most parents. But if there's just like one person listening today, and they maybe have a diabetic kid, and they talk to their neighbor, or you know, I don't know, like somebody hears it, and they say, Hey, my kid's been, you know, drinking a lot of water go into the bathroom a lot. And this story helps them avoid what we had to go through that is time well spent. And yeah, I mean, that's kind of I think, why I wanted to come on is I just feel like I feel like we need to be more aware of decay, it's really

Scott Benner 1:14:35
understand. Yeah, yeah. No, I do. Well, listen, I do have an episode already called decay on a plane like do I just call this one day on a speedboat? Yes, I think you found it to turn into a series like eventually, yeah. DK on a public bus. DK on a motorcycle, you know? I mean, other people have to have good stories like this, like, you know, literally. Has anyone ever been in DK in a police chase? In a car, that'd be amazing. Give me a whole series. Imagine like 20 years into this podcast people are just like making stuff up now they're like, like I once was on DK in the space ride, because we're gonna be right baby soon so. Oh my god, Sarah, you're delightful. Did you know that about yourself? Thank you. I don't know why your mom didn't like you. I'll let her know that you tell her I said I think she's misguided. Although I bet you she could tell me some stories about a 14 year old you that would curl my hair. Oh my gosh. First, let's thank Sarah for coming on the show and telling that great story. And let me ask you, anybody listening if you are somebody you love is suffered DK on a strange mode of transportation. Please send me a note. I'd love to have you on the show. I think we might have a series going here. We got DK on a plane. DK on a speedboat. I mean, anybody got a something different a boat ferry rocketship. Anybody had DKA on horseback, let me know. Oh, I'm running out of music. I'm going to do the rest of this African music

I'd also like to thank Omni pod for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast to learn more about Omni pod five, go to juice box. But that's not right. To learn more about Omni pod five, go to Omni pod.com forward slash juice box five. And to learn more about the Omni pod dash to find out if you may be eligible for a free 30 day trial of the dash, and so much more. On the pod.com Ford slash juicebox. There are links in the show notes of the podcast player that you're listening in right now. And there are links at juicebox podcast.com. But you can always type you type it with your fingers and put those links right in your browser. I want to thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. DK a on horseback, anyone? Anyone at all? Find my email address. Hit me up

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#634 The Quick Unclip

Spence and Victoria both have type 1 diabetes and they met in college.

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public, Amazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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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 634 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Victoria, she snuck one in on me, as they say, Victoria has type one diabetes. She met Spence at school, they are fast friends and have been on adventures together. Spence also has type one diabetes. Victoria listens to the podcast, Spence doesn't, but today they're both here to talk about their type one and their experiences in grad school. Please remember while 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, or becoming bold with insulin. I particularly enjoyed this today because two people similar age, very close friends both have type one, but they both sort of do diabetes differently. And it was interesting to hear their different answers to similar questions. I hope you enjoy it as well. Don't forget, if you're a US citizen, and you have type one diabetes, or you're from the United States, and you're a caregiver of someone with type one, filling out the survey AT T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox helps the podcast and it helps people living with type one.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Contour Next One blood glucose meter, please head over to contour next one.com Ford slash juice box to learn more about the Contour. Next One, if you're interested in seeing which meter my daughter uses, that's the one and that website is full of great information about it. Contour next one.com forward slash juicebox.

Tori 2:01
Yeah, so I'm Tori and I met Spence last year when we started our MBA program. So we're grad students, and I was diagnosed with diabetes a little bit later in life. I was diagnosed when I was 23, living in New York City. And I thought it would be fun to come on for Cincinnati to talk about kind of grad school what we did during zoom school all year, traveling a ton. Just being super active. We live in a place that you can be you know, outdoors all year round, which is great. So yeah, I'm really excited to be here. Okay, so

Scott Benner 2:33
Victor, you were diagnosed at what age 2323. And how old are you now?

Tori 2:39
26.

Scott Benner 2:39
Six. And we're Spence. Yeah, is a friend.

Tori 2:46
Yes. So we met. Yeah, last last fall when we first came came to school. And I had never had like a friend with diabetes before. Oh, so excited.

Scott Benner 2:57
Tell me Tell me about yourself.

Spence 3:00
Yeah, hi, Spence. Originally from Minnesota, I was diagnosed quite a bit earlier at age six. So and I'm currently 29. So I've been dealing with the throes of type one diabetes for for quite some time now. I've done a lot in the way of traveling and sports just to try and stay active, regardless of the of the disease. But somebody Ettore came to our MBA program last fall, and was really excited to meet a fellow classmate who also had type one, and so was a great way to connect, and we stay close ever since.

Scott Benner 3:34
That's cool. So how did we you guys virtual? Were we together?

Spence 3:39
You were We were virtual last year? Yep.

Scott Benner 3:42
So how did you figure out one another? Like what beeped. I'm assuming, like, there's something beef and one of

Tori 3:48
you. Yeah, I went to brunch with one of Spencer's roommates, and I was wearing my Dexcom on my arm. And she was like, Oh, my roommate has one of those. And I was like, no, like, they probably don't. And she was like, Yeah,

Scott Benner 4:00
I think I'd rather talk to that person. I would like to hear about that. I'd like to hear about the lunch for they're like, how many of these people am I going to meet my life? That's excellent. So she goes back tells she he or she goes back tell Spence like, I met somebody today, who has a Dexcom to when you guys are in the same class together that kind of thing. And you just started talking from there.

Spence 4:22
Pretty much I think even before she got a chance to get home Toria just jumped in my direct messages and shoot me a note to meet up and start talking about beers and insulin and you know, all the things that MBA programs consist of related to diabetes. So

Scott Benner 4:41
three what made it so exciting like, seriously, like, what made you like, reach? I mean, I'm looking at Spence a handsome guy, but I mean other than that, like what? What What made you go?

Tori 4:51
Yeah, I hadn't even I hadn't met him in person yet, so I had no idea what he looked like. But I was just super excited to potentially have i Didn't think I'd have another classmate with type one. Our class size isn't that big. So I thought for sure I'd be the only one. But I again, I kind of couldn't, I didn't, I couldn't really believe it when she was talking about it and wanted to like meet someone and kind of be their friend. Was

Scott Benner 5:17
this the first time you realized you'd been in class like, as an adult with somebody? Or I mean, has this ever happened in the past?

Tori 5:24
Yeah, I mean, for me, I was out of school when I got diagnosed. So I was kind of just like in the workplace, and no one I really knew that type one. And then I had kind of tried to meet people in New York. But I didn't have any close friends with diabetes. So I thought it would be interesting to talk more about it with someone

Scott Benner 5:43
I spent you grew up with. And so you had to have known a few people growing up right or no?

Spence 5:48
Yeah, yeah. And I've actually had a couple friends along the way who have gotten diagnosed like later in life similar to Tori. So have been able to, you know, help them kind of manage the transition to being a type one diabetic and no, often in complicated scenarios, like junior year of undergrad, so obviously, a lot of changes that they come at you pretty quickly and so have had the chance to have a couple friends along the way.

Scott Benner 6:15
How many Spence is it possible you're giving people type one diabetes?

Spence 6:19
It can be affected doubt myself here. But yeah, I mean, I'd say probably five or so I've first cousin who had it prior to when I was diagnosed, and then maybe three in my high school class a fourth who got it senior year, and another close buddy junior of college as well.

Scott Benner 6:40
Tori, do you have any family members with any autoimmune issues?

Tori 6:45
I don't my mom has a little bit of thyroid stuff. So you know, all in the family, but um, was totally totally shocked.

Scott Benner 6:53
Yeah, no, but so you were shocked by Taiwan. But we're gonna call we're gonna is Do you know for thyroid is Hashimotos? Or if it's just hypothyroidism? Has she ever?

Tori 7:03
I don't know about that. It very well. Could be though.

Scott Benner 7:06
I love asking people your age about their parents health, because they're like, why? Don't know, we don't talk about that stuff. But even how about you spent? family line you said cousin anything else? Autoimmune?

Spence 7:20
Not? Not that I know. I've had no.

Scott Benner 7:24
Yeah, you don't have an aunt that runs to the bathroom for Thanksgiving dinner all the time or anything like that? Because that might be celiac. And they don't know.

Spence 7:32
Yeah, not not that I've drawn attention to

Scott Benner 7:34
I would love it right now you outed one of your aunts. And you're like, Oh, my God, actually. Yes. So so we have two different perspectives here. Spence, who's known people with type one and has really grown up with it. And Tory who's only had it for a couple of years and has never really met anybody else. I'm going to guess the Tory was the more excited person in this in this meetup. But Spence, you probably knew the value of reaching back to her right?

Spence 8:00
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it was, it was funny, because I've had it for so long. That, you know, I haven't been as involved as diabetes has come into the digital age and was surprised to hear Tory talk about podcasts and shows and things like that, that are out there that candidly I just hadn't been paying as much attention to. So while I think she was maybe hoping to get a wealth of knowledge and information, like I probably got more insight and more resources out of the interaction at the end of the day.

Scott Benner 8:33
That's interesting, Tori, that did that shock you.

Tori 8:37
I mean, I think, because I was diagnosed a little bit later, I, I wanted to dive into the education and I also kind of was diagnosed at an age where like, my parents wouldn't really have helped at all, they live or living across the country. And I was in New York by myself. And it was something that I kind of had to manage day to day and didn't have another person or anyone to kind of talk to about management. So I really dove into like the podcasts and going to like, like seeking all the new technology and just kind of being really up to date the Facebook group but so I didn't know a sense of would have the same kind of up to date stuff that I was interested in. So we I kind of shared a little bit more with him.

Scott Benner 9:22
spent 20 years you you probably started with the human log, right.

Spence 9:29
I actually I started with I don't even know what the technical words were, but they called it regular. Oh, you

Scott Benner 9:35
you that's far enough back for regular and mph. So you were just a couple of times a day as a kid.

Spence 9:40
Yeah, yeah. And testing a couple of times a day. And so I mean, it's really gone from, you know, having a couple of data points that you're just kind of correcting around throughout the day to where we are today and these continuous glucose monitors and just a more much more efficient and real time monitoring.

Scott Benner 9:57
We know you both are wearing a G six but towards Are you or do you have a pump?

Tori 10:02
I was inspired by you, Scott and I got to Omni pod a couple months ago.

Scott Benner 10:06
Oh, this is normally where I like to say, hey, the price is gonna go up next year. Yeah, it's been spent. Do you have a fun?

Spence 10:13
I do have the tandem T slim switchover from the Medtronic mini med last year.

Scott Benner 10:19
And you said you were from Wisconsin or Minnesota? Did you say that? Minnesota? Yeah, you definitely got that. The Medtronic is like, yeah, like it's the companies up there. And so the sales is really close. A lot of people come out of that part of the country of Medtronic or using control like, you know, we're no, yes, you are. And Tory are you waiting from the pot five? Are you excited? Or?

Tori 10:42
Yeah, I've been waiting for one. So

Scott Benner 10:46
we're all waiting. It's coming. Don't worry. Yes. Maybe we should write the FDA all together. I have no idea. But okay, so So Tories and Tory, you listen to the podcast fairly religiously?

Tori 10:57
Yeah. I mean, I feel like I've learned my entire management from the podcast. Oh, well,

Scott Benner 11:02
and since you've never heard it.

Spence 11:04
I haven't heard a couple episodes of copy, but not enough to get I can't say I've heard everyone

Scott Benner 11:09
though. No. Like, you were like, I can't keep listening to this is that was

Spence 11:14
after 20. Some years there's there's only so much diabetes. You can

Scott Benner 11:17
Yeah, no, no. And that makes a lot of sense to me, actually. So. Okay, which one of you has more stable control? Question. Do you guys know? Have you do you ever talk about this? Let's start with a once a we know a one C is not the end all but spent years is?

Spence 11:37
Oh, geez, I have to go back but I believe I believe it was high sixes

Scott Benner 11:43
okay. How about you? Sorry.

Tori 11:44
Yeah, I've I was in the fives last year, but I'm in the sixes this year.

Scott Benner 11:48
Okay. Is that lifestyle? Like what happened?

Tori 11:52
Wow, yeah, even just being in our program, even though we had everything school related, be virtual. A lot of our classmates were still in the area. And we would we did a lot of things a lot, including, like drinking and eating and, you know, going out to things and traveling. It was it was a little bit of a change of lifestyle.

Scott Benner 12:14
Can you describe to people, either of you, both of you? What this has been like, like, grad school, virtually? Is it a like, is it a bummer? Does it suck? Or like I my son's a senior in college, and he came home to me after you know, COVID hit. And then I think he did a finished a semester in his bedroom, did another full semester in his bedroom, and then came to us and said, We are wasting my time and your money. And I'm going to skip and go back and he just went back the other day. So he's a little behind now. But he just said like, I don't know what we're doing. You know, does it feel like that sometimes? I think Yeah.

Spence 13:04
Yeah. In my in my opinion. Yeah, it was a very different experience. But I think, you know, super grateful that we still came in at the chance to meet each other. A big part of our program is also the networking aspect. And, you know, for me, like building a network on the West Coast, having most of it located in the Midwest was was huge. And so we're still able to achieve that, which, you know, for me, it was the biggest value add, but yeah.

Scott Benner 13:33
Do you think that the information you left in your brain with is the same as it would have been if you were together in a room?

Spence 13:42
Probably not. But, again, I don't know that that necessarily is bad. Yeah, yeah. Well, that that was the the primary goal from from my point of view, okay.

Scott Benner 13:53
I gotcha. Yeah. I have a question here. What about just the sedentary nature of it right? Like now you don't have to get up in the morning and hustle and get out the door like, Do you think that's got something like is your is your activity level lower than it would be normally?

Tori 14:13
I think while we've been kind of were in like the Bay Area, then it is more sedentary. But what we kind of started to do last year was because we didn't have to be in the location the school was in we we ended up going on the road a little bit. So we did a ton of skiing. We did you know a week in Salt Lake taking classes we did a week in Colorado skiing and snowboarding. And then we went down to like Santa Barbara and spent a week there. We were in Hawaii for a week. So in that sense, we were not sedentary but when we were kind of just sitting in our own bedrooms taking classes, that was just a huge bummer.

Scott Benner 14:51
Yeah. Well, so you guys basically took advantage of this not having to be in a room and you're like, I guess wherever you have a laptop, you have a classroom so Let's go cool places. That's a pretty good idea. That's yeah, that worked out pretty well, I would imagine. And you guys, I know, this isn't my business. And it's not what this is about. You guys are like, not together. You just friends, right? Correct. Correct. All right. It's got awkward and weird for a second, but I wanted to just understand so. So you just you guys just became good friends through having tight bond, can you explain either of you what that attraction is, like, there's, you know, there are certain parts of the podcast that I can't fill in. And I don't have diabetes. So why it's so important, and why it feels, I don't know how it feels to you. Sometimes I mess with the open to the add music forever thinking like it's gonna make this like perfect mix to help get your attention. And then in the end, I think it was a waste of time. But anyway, today I'd like to talk to you about the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. Now, it doesn't matter if you have a Dexcom or libre, you still need an accurate meter. Yo, you please, you need a good meter. Okay, not a crappy meter, not an okay meter, a great meter. You want to know that when you're testing your blood sugar, you're getting accuracy. The Contour Next One offers just that. And many other things. For instance, the test strips for the Contour Next One, possess Second Chance testing capabilities. That's a lot of words that just mean, if you touch the blood don't get quite enough. And you go back to get more that does not interfere with the quality of the test or ruin the test trip. Second Chance test strips. See whoops, no. Okay. And yeah, beep perfect. The meter also has an incredibly easy to read screen. It's very handleable. That's a word, meaning that it's not too big, and it's not too small. It's easy to travel with carry in your bag or your pocket. And at the same time, not so small that you can't get a hold of it with your hand I got the big hands. You don't mean like the big I got big hands. And I can still handle that meter perfectly well. It has a bright light for what I'm trying to do Arden's blood sugar in the middle of the night. And now it's just nice, feels nice. It's got a good vibe about it. I don't know how to put it exactly. It's a great meter. It's actually my favorite meter that Arden has ever used. And I'm telling you, I if I had a stack of Bibles right now put one of my hands on it, but the other hand up in the air, and I would swear to that, absolutely my favorite meter contour next one.com forward slash juicebox. To great website has a ton of great information. I've now used the word great three times in a row. And didn't mean to. But it's too late at night for me to go back and edit this. So let's just say that the website is great. But it's also awesome, fantabulous and has a ton of really useful information. right at your fingertips. Contour next one.com forward slash juicebox. Get a good meter. Yeah, you could get an okay meter, I wouldn't get a fantastic meter. Why not? I mean, it may cost less than cash than you're paying right now for your current meter through insurance. What I know, I know it's crazy. Contour next one.com forward slash fuse box. links in the show notes. Links at juicebox podcast.com. When you click on the links, you're supporting the show. Go get yourself a one fantabulous meter extravaganza. Get a good meter, you deserve it. Just don't take whatever meter the doctor gives you. Do a tiny bit of research help yourself. And now I will read you synonyms for great accomplished ace adept, complete. consummate crack Cracker Jack, educated, experienced expert good master masterful Master Li practice. professed proficient skilled skillful versed veteran virtuoso words related to great adroit, clever, deft, dexterous, handy slick shorthanded, gifted talented polished refined the Contour Next One blood glucose meter is refined it is workman like knowledge of blood sugar testing. I mean it's great I'm just gonna stick with great

Tori 19:53
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just someone who is there who gets it. I mean I think when we are traveling as well It would be like, you know, one of our pods will stop working or kind of, you know, alarms would be going off. And it's like, you know, like, are you good? Like some other who always has, you know, sugar in case we're walking home and going low. But it's yeah, it's just, it's, it's really nice to have someone that you don't have to explain things to, like my roommates would would totally, you know, help me in anything and be willing to be there. But I don't necessarily want to, like, sit down with them every time something happens and explain everything that's happening.

Scott Benner 20:33
Is that a function of see, I feel like it's just a function of you don't want to have to do that. It would be like if I had to explain to somebody that I made dinner, like, right, like if I had to say, Oh, here's what happened around four o'clock, I realized it was getting late. So I went to the refrigerator, and I looked, and now you're explaining this money beam thing like, right, step by step. It's not embarrassment, right? You don't want to not tell them because you don't want them to know you have diabetes. You just this is not something you want to have to say out loud or revisit. Is that correct?

Tori 21:04
Yeah. And I think it's just it's such a hard thing to explain, because it could be the exact same situation on a Tuesday and Thursday and be completely different. Insulin needs are like, oh, like, I really want to go on a run. But I have so much insulin on board that like I just I'm not going to like there's there's there's so many nuances.

Scott Benner 21:24
Yeah, my daughter's on her placebos right now in her birth control, and she might as well be a different person with diabetes. Like just fascinate. And Spencer, I'm sure that happens to you on your birth control as well. So

Tori 21:38
yeah, I always tell my roommates, you know, when they

Scott Benner 21:42
look up, I'm gonna, I need it's interesting. Like, she needs more insulin during the pills. Because of, you know, because there's more hormones, and then suddenly you take the pills away, there's fewer hormones and bang, like, like, especially you don't have to, although I guess, you listen, I'm only looking at you guys from shoulders up. But you're a big guy. Right, Spencer?

Spence 22:01
I'm gonna Tory

Scott Benner 22:06
I was trying to get to you must have had similar situations when you went into puberty.

Spence 22:12
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, again, what a while ago. So, you know, I can't recall exactly how turbulent it was. But, but yeah, I didn't even know that about about birth control, though. Yeah. So

Scott Benner 22:27
I don't think it's going to come in real handy for you. But. So you guys are really interesting, because Spencer gets type one at a young age, pretty much young enough, I'm guessing where you don't? Like you don't have any weird feelings about having diabetes, right? Like, it just feels like you've always had it?

Spence 22:45
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. And I think, you know, comparing our two experiences, like I, I've just, you know, grown up with diabetes and have, you know, evolved and grown physically and mentally and whatnot, like with the disease, and it's just been a part of my life for so long that I've never really had to, you know, make a material switch and lifestyle or anything like that. And so from my point of view, I think it would be more difficult to be diagnosed later in life and just have to do a total 180. So have, you know, a lot of respect for Torian and other friends that have just had to refigure out and recalibrate their life later on?

Scott Benner 23:24
So what is my question here? It was, it was really fascinating to watch you when I asked about it once he's earlier and you were like, I guess I could look somewhere, like, you know, like, like, I don't really know. But Tory was more specifically understood what hers was. And is that a function of time? You think? Or do you think that's a function of Tory came up in a world where, like, Tory, you're you you think about diabetes the way I do, right? But, but Spencer doesn't think about it the way you do right.

Tori 24:01
Now, yeah, I think we do have slightly different approaches to things.

Scott Benner 24:08
Okay, and what do you and what do you think that what do you think this is gonna be interesting? I'm gonna ask both of you please try to be honest. What do you think the difference is like, Tori, what do you think the differences between how you do it and how Spence does it and then I'm gonna ask the same back again?

Tori 24:25
Yeah, I suppose I don't use really talk specific numbers, because I feel like it's so personal. But, I mean, I like to stay. I do leave between like 80 and 110. And I think Spence one time was like, I spent so you can, you could tell if this read what you were like, oh, yeah, like 90 is kind of low.

Spence 24:45
I, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think just to like, from from a high level, if, if I was to assess it, I think Tory is more particular about like, managing it. No, very My newly, whereas I like my emphasis is on ensuring that diabetes doesn't slow down the lifestyle that I want to live. And that, like, that's the macro factor that I'm trying to control for, rather than, like, you know, managing the the specific numbers knowing that like, it's obviously a benefit long term, you know, the better you can manage it day by day, but I think my my focus has always been on like, living a lifestyle and managing diabetes and not letting it get in the way of that lifestyle.

Scott Benner 25:34
Cool. Please understand going forward dispense because you don't listen as much that if I sound at any point in the next couple of minutes, like I'm judging anybody, I'm not okay. I'm just trying to dig into something. Tori, does diabetes get in the way of your lifestyle?

Tori 25:50
I don't think so. I think when I was first diagnosed, I was making choices that just would make it ease. You're like, I ate a lot of low carb. But now I kind of am at a point where I can, I can have pretty good control no matter what I'm kind of doing or eating.

Scott Benner 26:08
So would you say that the podcast has helped you to think less about diabetes, but have more specific management ideas?

Tori 26:17
Yeah, I think the podcast has been really good. And you're really good at kind of just like being intuitive about things, and less about, you know, just like carb counting. And so being like, oh, like, yeah, you're looking at like a banana versus a piece of cake. And even if they're the same carbs, you intuitively know kind of what the difference is gonna be.

Scott Benner 26:39
What's funny, because I think, from his explanation, I think Spencer and I are in the same place where we don't think about diabetes very frequently. But ah, I don't know, this is. So I find this incredibly interesting. I appreciate the by the way, people don't know. But I did not realize Spence was going to be on the program. So the two people popped up in front of me, and I was like, Oh, and by the way, this is probably the best I've ever done with two people. It's a it's a learned skill that I don't get to use very often. I have done some interviews with two people that when I'm done, I'm like, Oh, I was so bad at that. But I actually feel like this is going well, if it's not, please don't tell me because you'll ruin my confidence right now. But

Tori 27:19
no, I mean, Spence has done things that I feel like I would not be comfortable doing like he did, like this huge hike in Spain through like France and like lived in like, Australia, like just like without like, like insulin for a while or like, it's just done things that like I would not do.

Scott Benner 27:38
And, oh, okay, Spence, do you leave your blood sugar higher for stuff like that? Or what? How do you like what does? I guess what I want to understand is, let me say something that asked my question. I think that people who have had type one for a long time, very commonly say, I don't want diabetes, to impact my life, which I think is a great message. And I agree with, I want to be super clear about that. I also think that it's a little bit some people can use that statement as a crutch is not the right word. But I think excuse is the right word for not doing as well, because well, okay, sure. My blood sugar was 200 all day today, but I didn't let it get in my way. And I think that, that makes a ton of sense in that timeframe. Because the technology didn't exist, you couldn't see your blood sugar's anyway, like, I mean, who the hell would know, right? And now suddenly, things have shifted. And this technology exists for many people, where you can suddenly see your blood sugar and the difference between impacts and foods and things like that. And I would say that Tory probably lives and doesn't let diabetes get in our way, either. But I think the statement comes from two different places. Is that a fair statement from me? Spence?

Spence 28:50
I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the big thing probably centers on, on your point around what, what you grew up with, or what, you know, what your baseline for learning about diabetes may have been, and the fact that, you know, that, that baseline and the ability to control it more minute, Li has changed a lot over the last 20 years. And it's definitely been a personal choice, you know, as to how much do you want to lean into that, that learning curve, and keep up with it? Candidly, I would say I got I still am, but for a while, was quite jaded, just on the lack of progression in the space and the fact that technology hadn't kept up with with diabetes in the same way that it had and other industries and so was, you know, just got kind of set up and just removed myself from the learning curve. You know, I would say, you know, as a result of meeting Tori and learning more about some of the resources out there and podcasts and whatnot have had an increased This is on, you know, trying to get better control or at least better technology. Not, I still wouldn't say to the same level that maybe both of you have, but definitely an improvement over before.

Scott Benner 30:11
So you said something I find really interesting. Because I, my daughter's had type one for 14. A God now I don't know, six. Oh, math, this is always fun. She's 17 she had when she was 215. Like, like, for 15 years. Okay. And mandatory expenses. 100%, right. Like, it would be like four years would go by and a company would come out with a new meter, it was no more accurate than the meter they made before it was in a different shape or something like that. And people were like, Oh, finally, it was like, it was like it rained from the heavens, you know, and it was a meaningless improvement. If it was an improvement at all. It wasn't until, I mean, for my money. It's not till Dexcom where people like, like, things start leaping. And, you know, you don't even realize, you know, the rate limiting factors is was always the FDA really, and that there was no money in this. Like, if you're already buying a meter, what's this company's onus to make a better meter, right? Like, so Dexcom comes into the space, and they make this thing and then they go, we can make it better. But then the FDA is in the way, because it takes so long Dexcom actually hires people to learn about that process so they can get through the FDA process more efficiently. Like that kind of innovation lacked for people with diabetes, like nobody was, nobody gave a crap and nobody was doing anything. And so that kind of beat you down, huh?

Spence 31:40
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think he hit the nail on the head. I mean, when I was first diagnosed back in the mid 90s, the, you know, what they told me in the hospital was oh, like, they think we'll have a cure in five years. And then five years later was like, oh, yeah, next five years, like, we're gonna get there. And 20 years later. And to your point, you know, the first 15 years was really no development, no emphasis on development. And you'd have someone like Medtronic, who's just been the the big dog on campus and has cornered the market and has all these captive patients that are just cash cows for their business. And there really wasn't, you know, the motivation to develop better technologies. And candidly, it's really only now I think that we're seeing more of an emphasis from the general public on tracking blood sugars and whatnot, even for non diabetics that, I think, you know, will be the big catalyst that might push diabetes technology forward. Yeah, I'm, I'm,

Scott Benner 32:42
I'm sorry, I don't mean to cut you

Spence 32:43
off. No, no, I was just gonna say I'm, I'm all for the general public, paying closer attention to their blood sugar, because it's only going to help all of us

Scott Benner 32:51
Yeah, man. It's true. And it's where you got to give a lot of credit to new pump companies to because they actually, I mean, there's really two, right? There's Omni pod in tandem and then Medtronic. To your point about Medtronic being so big. You got to give those other two companies a lot of credit for wanting to be an insulin pump company. Right? Because that's a they could just easily go Medtronic, Scott this, like, what are we gonna do? We can't make any kind of debt in this. There's no business here. But they they are and it's a it's a it's to everyone's benefit, but it competitions really important, you know, for advancement. But, but Tory it's so good. Do you? Is it weird to hear him say that? Like, because you don't feel like that? Like there's just a cornucopia stuff for you to choose from?

Tori 33:38
No, I mean, I had issues that I've heard other people talk about as well, where I had to basically beg my endocrinologist to prescribe a CGM, for me. It was not really of interest to her. And I've since kind of found another endocrinologist. But no, I mean, I think it's when you're doing research, I mean, my, my, my main form of research initially was like Reddit, so it was kind of just hearing people's different experiences on Reddit, which, you know, can really be can throw you in a whole nother direction. But, no, that's kind of like how I, I was, I was deciding between the JSX and like, the FreeStyle Libre product,

Scott Benner 34:18
you know, I'm starting to get when people come into the private Facebook group, they there's like four questions they answer to make sure they're like living things. And one of them is like, Where'd you hear about the podcast, and I'm starting to hear Reddit more often, which I felt really good about, because I like you thought of Reddit as a place where people complained about diabetes, not about a plan, which by the way, I think there needs to be a place to complain about it, but I didn't think of them as like a group of people who were like, I wonder what I can, like do but it's nice to see that even in that space, like people and because that's also there are adults, which is important to me to like, you know, I don't want to I mean, I know the podcast is pretty much down the middle. It's tough. talking to parents and adults. But I always, I'm very careful and, and hopeful not to abandon adults because like, because Spence, you don't know this, and there's no reason for you to know, but I'm 50 years old. And when I was 18, my best friend was diagnosed with type one, and he's not with us anymore. And he fell into a rut of this is the way it goes, this is what I was told, yes, it's not going right. But it's not my fault. It's what the doctor said. He was taken regular and mph, he didn't transition to a faster acting insulin. When they became available. He kept doing what he was doing. And, you know, those kind of all those different influences impacted his health really significantly. And, like I look at you, and I don't know you, and you might find this weird for me to say, but like, I want you to, like, I want you to know what torinos I don't, I don't care if you do it. Like I'm not into telling people what to do. But I don't want you to get to a point where you're like, Oh, I didn't know. Like, that's like, you know what I mean? Like, as long as people are making informed decisions, to me that's comfortable, like for me, but I don't want people to be in the position my buddy was in where he just didn't realize any of this existed. And he was just living like it was 1986 the whole time. And I know that's a bummer. And I don't mean to be, but I like that the podcast is like it's really exciting to me to Tori found it and is doing so well. And it's exciting for me that you guys met each other because like I've now I'm dying to know like now Spencer has to come back on the show like three years from now. Like it's not even like he's not even allowed to say no to it. Because I because I want to know what happens next. Not that he's doing a poor job because he clearly isn't he's doing terrific, right. And he he adjusted you adjusted on your own like you went to a different pump you you got the CGM. So you're not in the same scenario where you're like unaware, it's just that you have you're going to always be colored by those first years, I think. And I don't I hope that doesn't. I'm not even talking about you. I'm talking about everybody. I hope that doesn't hold people back. That feeling of this isn't worth it. Because it's not. It's not going to be any better. When it obviously can be. So I don't even know you might have taken great offense to me just now. I don't I apologize if you did.

Spence 37:23
No, no, not at all. I think that was all. That was all very fair. Oh, I'll take you up on that offer to come back.

Scott Benner 37:30
Yeah, no, I would love my motivation. Yeah, I would love to know like, what your relationship? Plus you guys will be married by then you don't even realize that now. You have 16 Super diabetes babies probably. Is that that would be a lot. Trust me, one's a lot. I'm going to ask both of you. Similar question. Do you I realize this is not the part of your life. I realize you guys aren't together. I'm teasing you. But do you think about having kids? Do you worry about diabetes for children, as I run through it through your minds?

Spence 38:08
I can't say I've put significant thought into it now, but I don't think it would, again, hold me back from living a normal life or at least intending to live a normal life and start a normal family of whatever time that's appropriate.

Scott Benner 38:22
I don't think anyone listening is surprised that a guy your age hasn't thought about having a family and but worry, right?

Tori 38:31
I mean, I've definitely thought about it. And I see kind of parents in the Facebook group. And I feel like I might, I might feel this way as well. Even though I do not plan on having children anytime soon. But I feel like I might feel even more like passion and then maybe guilt if my children if my child's blood sugar isn't going that well. Like for me, it's like okay, like, you know, I have a bad day. I have a bad day like whatever. But I feel maybe like if my child has, you know, a day in the three hundreds all day or something, I'm gonna like, freak out. And I feel like it would be more of like a mental stress. Actually.

Scott Benner 39:07
Tell me how old you are again. I'm 26 You're the chemicals in your brain are about to like attack you. Got yours away. Tory have a baby. Have a baby and you're gonna be like, No, I don't want to I'm young. I just got my MBA, and they're gonna be like, no, no, no, no. Try to fight it. Because also you're gonna like guys, you don't even like when that starts happening. You're gonna be like, he seems okay. Look, it's gonna get real weird. And it's how I tricked my life.

Tori 39:36
But it'll be like Immaculate Conception setup.

Scott Benner 39:43
Right, right. I understand. I had a thought for Spencer and now it's out of my head. Hold on a second. Spencer, what would you say to parents who would who are right now raising kids with like, like legit Goldstar like a one sees their time and range? like crazy, and they know, one day their kids are going to go into high school and college and take over their own management, you know, and it's not going to probably be the same, like, Do you think there's any comfort that you could offer in there?

Spence 40:15
Yeah, I mean, candidly, I, I wish, you know, maybe my parents had been more like that, and more, I think they transitioned and were willing to pull back, you know, earlier than maybe they could have or should have, I don't know. But I think at the end of the day, like, you're gonna have to transition the knowledge and the ownership and everything over to your kid. And I think it's just gonna happen naturally, like, you're, you're gonna have to let your kid go out and play with other kids and be away from the house for a while. And that's gonna extend into school and college and living on their own and, you know, partying, and probably drinking and whatnot. And so, I think it's probably natural for any parent to be worried and any parent of a diabetic to be even more worried about those kind of things. But, again, I think that's, that's all part of life. And if you've instilled the knowledge and you know, the, the emphasis and the the learnings in your child for good management, and what that'll bring them later in life, I think that that's all you can do. And at some point, you know, you're gonna have to just let go a little bit.

Scott Benner 41:29
Where do you think your parents being more involved would have been beneficial?

Spence 41:35
Maybe, maybe just following up and keeping up to date with, with trends and new things coming out, and just a greater emphasis on the sugar management and kind of watching your diet and whatnot there? Yeah, St. Joe's?

Scott Benner 41:55
Am I Am I understanding that you get like a baseline understanding of how to keep your diabetes, you know, whatever it is, and check, we'll call it. And so you're doing, you're taking steps every day as a kid. And as long as at the end of the day, as long as you're not dead or passed out, then this was a good day, and you must be doing right, but there's so much more underneath of it that you can't possibly follow as a child, right?

Spence 42:17
Yeah, yeah. And, and again, I'm sure it's difficult from a parent's point of view as well, not having diabetes and trying to, you know, they're probably not sure how, how serious to take a high blood sugar or low blood sugar, and, and how, you know, minute, or how much to micromanage it. But I think, over over time, like, you just kind of naturally had to take more ownership. And now if my blood sugar went low in the middle of the night as a kid, like, I wasn't waking my parents up, you know, at some point pretty young to to deal with it if like, I would go downstairs and make a bowl of cereal and get my blood sugar's back up. And because I was doing it, and I was a, you know, seven, eight year old kid, like, maybe the blood sugar shoot too high and or maybe it's not a, like, perfectly calibrated redirection. So I think, you know, over time, it's just kind of more and more ownership that was transitioned over.

Scott Benner 43:18
You know, what's interesting is that I've spoken to, like, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people and adults whose parents weren't super involved when they were kids are always very careful to protect their parents when they talk about it. And, like, it'll, it borderlines on the defense, they want people to know, my parents did a good job, like, like, this was what and people whose parents are super involved, will say, like, my mom was up my butt the whole time. And I'm like, wow, people are so complex. Like, right, like, it's so it's so interesting. Like it like I feel like if if Spencer's parents were like, super involved, right now, I'd be like, I wish my parents would have just given me a little more space. And it's interesting how, no matter what, like, you guys don't have kids. But one day, you'll see like, no matter what you do, like, you can't win is how it feels sometimes like like, right, like, it's just like, when you do something people are always gonna have. It's not bad. Like, I'm not like, dude, like, I think your parents probably did a terrific job, especially the time you were diagnosed. And it sounds like you were a fairly responsible kid, which probably gave them a lot of confidence and, and, you know, solace. But it's just it's super interesting, like you you don't know because you haven't heard all the responses but there are studies that that indicate that people with type one do well with having parental or some sort of, you know, somebody to lean on into their mid 20s like it because it's such a difficult, like complex thing that sometimes you just need somebody to bounce it off of. Tori, do you have somebody or who do you cuz you don't it sounds like you, you in Spence have a really interesting relationship like it's not. It's because you guys have diabetes that you met each other but you don't speak about it very often. So who do you talk to when you're confused about what you're doing? Yeah, I

Tori 45:14
think we talk about things that like a high level, but we don't get super, super nitty gritty. But no, I mean, I. Yeah, I, I mean, I think a lot of people are diabetes, to work maybe like adults, and I don't know, I don't have a ton of people to bounce things off of. So I just kind of think about it myself.

Scott Benner 45:35
Yeah. Does the podcast substitute for humans? Like, do you just listen to people's conversations? And kind of, like, I'm not saying you pretend you're there. But you know what I mean? Like, is you like, Oh, here's another person talking about it, that I can't find in my real life.

Tori 45:49
Yeah, totally. And I love when you talk about specific situations, like with art in line, kind of like what you do or how you're doing things, or if someone else talks about specific situations as well. Yeah,

Scott Benner 46:01
I think if I did that, with Spencer, he punched me. I think if I was like, here's what I would do with this Pre-Bolus. He'd be like, dude, I'm alright. Thanks. Not that I would not that I would infer myself onto somebody. But I just I think there's a, I don't know, there's like a card you get when you've had diabetes for a while, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, I, you can see it on people. It's a it's sort of this quiet confidence of like, I have this. Does it feel expressor? Because you grew up taking care of it so much on your own? Like, does it feel would It feels strange if somebody tried to interject themselves? Like, what if we suddenly made you married? And your spouse was like, I'd like to help with this? Do you think you'd be like, I don't need your help with us? Or do you think you'd be? Where do you think you'd be with that?

Spence 46:49
Yeah, that's a good question. I think, you know, initial reaction might be, you know, a little averse or a little resistant to taking, you know, someone's help. But I think, in actuality, I probably would appreciate that and would welcome in at some point, especially if it was done just in a, you know, like a genuine, trying to help sort of way rather than, like, a forceful takeover of my management and I torinos like, I'm not a big fan of being micromanaged and whatnot. And I think that would translate into diabetes as well. But yeah, I do feel like I was, you know, maybe forced to be like, very independent with with that, and, as a result, just independent in life, you know, very early on and so, yeah, I can't say I've had that level of like hand holding in a long time. But yeah, I think would be something I'd welcome back in.

Scott Benner 47:48
Did you ever go through a bad spot, like the jury wants he's ever gets super high, and you stop taking care of yourself? Or?

Spence 47:55
No, no, I mean, I, I've never been in denial over it or anything. And I'm sure the height agencies are all all relative definitely had better periods of management and worse, you know, the, the worst probably being a big chunk of time, where I was working, like 7080 hours a week, you know, was on the, the old Medtronic pumps, which, you know, I could go on a rant about and just, you know, just trying to, like, keep up with life and diabetes was just the, you know, annoying distraction that was, if anything, just keeping me from like performing at the same level as everyone around me. So, yeah, I'd say that's probably the worst.

Scott Benner 48:37
This is normally a time where I say out loud, Medtronic, it's not my fault. People don't like your stuff. And then I move on gracefully. Sorry, I have a question. Please try to answer it. Honestly. I try not I'm not trying to break up your relationship together. But has he ever done something like with his insulin or something where you bet your lip and you were thinking like, dude, no, no, no, no, no, not like that. Or do more stuff like have you ever had that feeling? I'm gonna ask Spencer the same thing. So just, I'm just wondering if you've like, because it sounds like it sounds like you guys don't get involved but it still must be like you're aware of each other understands what you're doing right? Like so you're together and you're doing something like if you ever looked up and thought Dude, that's not 45 carbs that's 60 carbs or like like something like that or?

Tori 49:23
I mean, I think we we've shared our blood sugars when they're going really well. Because I mean, it's it's again it's it's so personal and I would never ever want to bake like or expense feel bad about something. I mean, I feel like sometimes he's like riding a little high and I would like give a correction at that spot. But like I I'm not I'm never gonna like say anything or judge

Scott Benner 49:47
or good I love your guys generation. You're so kind to each other. Like she did not answer my question until the very like, she's like, I guess I'm gonna have to answer he's gonna press me more so, but I really do love that you guys Just like everyone cares about each other's feelings, somebody did something, my daughter's 17. And somebody did something crappy and like their circle. Last night, I said, you know, if this was the 80s, you could just be really horrible back to them, and it would feel terrific. I was like, but you guys are not allowed to do that anymore. So I think you're supposed to just accept them for who they are and move on. But Spencer, really, what does she screw up that you want to talk about? And you just don't say anything?

Spence 50:24
Yeah, no, I, I definitely don't think it's anything to screw up. And as you know, we pointed out here, I think Tory is better at managing the the numbers themselves than I am. I think if anything, maybe I've, I've encouraged Tory or maybe tried to, like, open her eyes that there are like, like, you can still take risks with diabetes and go on adventures and things like that. And so, yeah, I think that that might be the only the only area that I'd say like it, you know, diabetes. Can can feel like it's holding you back. But but it doesn't have to, and I think maybe combining you know, both of our viewpoints would get to the ideal state where you can, you know, still live like a you know, the, the adventurous life that you want, while you know, closely managing your your diabetes and getting good numbers.

Scott Benner 51:19
I have a couple of things here. So have you ever like, Have you guys ever like split a sandwich and she's Bolus like 35 carbs? And you were thinking 20 You think? Oh, hell, I guess maybe it's 35? Or, like, is that ever happened?

Tori 51:32
You know, we've shared a lot of meals, but we've never talked about what we're dosing or the carbs we're dosing for. I don't think ever

Scott Benner 51:42
three don't listen to this next part. Because I don't want you to feel weird, but Spencer, I'm really pretty straight. I'm thinking of leaving my wife and pursuing you. Like you seem like a really solid guy. Like every one of your answers, it seems like genuine and well thought out and like that idea that together you guys are like a great bank of knowledge of like now and before and how valuable it is together and like you're seriously like you're dating right? Like somebody is trying to marry Spencer? Really? Like seriously like Tori, you're fine. But Spencer's amazing. Like, you're getting that right. And I don't mean just fine. Like, like, you're like you. Alright, let's pretend he's not here for a second. He's a super good guy, isn't he? No, look. Don't look at him. Like, look at me. It's just my picture. But look at me. He's a really good person. Is he? Am I wrong? Am I getting it wrong?

Tori 52:40
Yeah, he's, he's not perfect.

Scott Benner 52:45
Okay, all right. He's not like robbing banks, or like, Are there a trail of women who think they're about to call him but he's not really going to or like anything like that going on.

Tori 52:57
Now he's just, you know, riding his motorcycle away.

Scott Benner 53:01
Spencer, how long do you have to be with a person before you tell them? You have diabetes?

Spence 53:06
Um, I mean, it's the the beeping is usually give it away for me. Just yeah, very various insulin pump beeping. But I I mean, I'm very open about it. And don't don't conceal it at all.

Scott Benner 53:19
Yeah, Tori, how about you? Is it hard to date because of it?

Tori 53:23
Yeah, I feel a little bit weirder about it. I usually don't say anything on like a first date.

Scott Benner 53:29
Yeah. Have you heard the the after dark episode with a woman who talked about having sex with a pump and all that?

Tori 53:37
Don't know if I've heard that one. Specifically, I think I think I have. I think I have because you were saying something. She was like, oh, like, I don't know if I want to be like, like naked with my pump on. And you were like, oh, yeah, but like you're just naked. It's fine.

Scott Benner 53:53
I remember somebody saying something about them having their infusion set on their hip. And I wanted to, I guess I'll have to, like bleep this out. I don't know, like, Spencer, a lot of kids listen to this podcast. So. But my follow up question. Like where I thought she was going with it was that like, I'm just gonna say it, I'll bleep it out that I was out of the question. Because of that. And then she went in a completely different, like way. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. Like, see there? I'm, I wasn't even trying to be funny. Like, I really felt like that was where she was headed with the statement. And then I was like, oh, it's something completely different. Like there's all these other things to think about. But what I found mostly was when I spoke to I cuz I spoke to an adult man, an adult woman who both had had type one for a while, and it was like they both were just like, initially the concern is embarrassment. Like like that's the initial concern which I felt terrible hearing. And then after that, when you're in a real relationship becomes more functional about your, the the equipment, I mean, the diabetes equipment, and then from there it becomes More of like, what happens if I get low or high during the event, which is what I ended up calling it because I didn't know what else to say. And it was just interesting to watch how it grew from where the initial concerns were to, you know how it went through the process. So is it not sexy Spence to throw your pump aside? Like, like, you do it when she's like, taking off her pants, so she can't say you're like, like, you're like, where does it happen? Just tell me one thing, because yours is tube. So there's more forward to you. Tory's got a Omnipod she's okay, but you you got you take your dude, you take it off, right?

Spence 55:40
Yeah, yeah has perfected the, the quick unclip at this point.

Scott Benner 55:47
See, that's the stuff parents don't want to know what's gonna happen. And I have to write down 5040 Where I said, oh, oh, no, I'm gonna write down this time because I suddenly got the quick unclip super seriously could end up being the title of this episode, just to go. I'm sure Tori's as a more of a listener. Tory's disappointed something she said hasn't become the title yet, but that was really cool. Tori, are you upset that you invited him on now? Because he's so nice?

Tori 56:19
No, I think it's great.

Scott Benner 56:21
This was really this is a great idea. I want to say to other people who are coming on, please don't spring other guests on me, although this worked really well. But that doesn't mean your stories just got an eye for it. Or you're like a, like a budding producer of audio content. But I appreciate that. Spence, what does she ever tell you about the podcast? Like, does she ever break down and go? Like, there's here's an idea, or a thing I heard?

Spence 56:45
Um, yes. Yes. I specific instances, like don't come to mind right now. But I know, she's like a very avid listener, and has definitely pushed me on the podcast and plugged it as the main source of information that I think she, she goes to, or just like, actively?

Scott Benner 57:04
How does that? How does that hit you? Like internally when, when she or somebody else says to you there's a thing about diabetes? I think you should check out? Is it like the abrasca against it? Or does it feel like something you might consider?

Spence 57:17
It's, it definitely feels like something I would consider. Again, I think the resistance is just, like, knowing how to incorporate something else into to life, I think my I think for the longest time, like my tendency has been to try and minimize diabetes, involvement or influence in my life as much as possible. And so, you know, the, the thought of like, converting all of my podcast consumption, or significant amount of it over to diabetes. And just like increasing that involvement is probably where the just like, subconsciously, the resistance comes from? Knowing that it's not the right answer, and that it would be beneficial to do so.

Scott Benner 58:04
That's really honest, I appreciate that. Do you have? Do you think you did it? The idea of like, cuz you've said a lot now, like, I don't want diabetes to encumber my life, like, does it not? Or does the pursuit of not letting it take up a lot of your time?

Spence 58:21
No. I, I would say I've been very happy with how little I've let it into my life. And and I mean, that's, that's been a big source of pride for me, in terms of like, what I've been able to do and what I hope to continue doing in the future. But that, that said, like, you know, as we've talked through here, can certainly do more and would hope to be able to like, increase accuracy and whatnot, while still minimizing any, any sort of influence negatively in like,

Scott Benner 58:55
is there a feeling like there's time? Like, I don't need to do it right now? I'm young, like I can, does that ever come into your head? Like, because you're talking about that there might be more out there fine tuning or whatever you want to call it? But does it feel like it's not important to do yet?

Spence 59:10
No, no. I mean, I, like I know the impact of doing it earlier, and that they're all positive. I think the thought was, it's been more that we, you know, you only have one life to live and there are a lot more experiences and things to do when you're young, whether for a diabetic or non diabetic and so prioritizing and emphasizing those experiences now, in my mind would ensure that I wouldn't look back in 40 years kind of regardless of my condition then and wish that I had done more.

Scott Benner 59:48
I'm totally in love with your sponsor. That's all I mean, in a very like, like, Bro way but you're my new favorite person. So Tori, I got to talk to you more because I feel like I'm I'm leaving you out. I have it apologize.

Tori 1:00:01
No, it's okay third wheeling.

Scott Benner 1:00:04
You guys like definitely like Do you have any other diabetes friends? Like, is this gonna be a cabal? Is it gonna turn into a thing or

Tori 1:00:12
so there is there's our program is two years and there were two other people last year for a year above us who had type one and I'm wondering if there's there's new incoming students who who are diabetic as well, but right now it's just the two of us,

Scott Benner 1:00:27
you guys. I mean, I know somebody saw like a mutual friend saw your Dexcom but are one of you more visibly? Diabetic? Diabetic? That was weird, like, does one of you not hide your stuff for like, Do you not care? Like where do you stand with that? A lot of people worry about that for their kids. Victoria, where do you where your paws mostly?

Tori 1:00:50
Yeah, I don't really care. But I actually don't love using the back of my arm because I feel like it catches on things, especially the Omni pod. I feel like it's a little bit big. So I really like wearing my pod on my legs, like my thighs. And then I almost always wear my Dexcom on my stomach.

Scott Benner 1:01:04
Okay, how about you Spencer? Where do you put your sets?

Spence 1:01:07
Um, yeah, usually pump on my legs just seems to be kind of the most out of the way. spot and then I have been wearing the Dexcom the back of my arm quite a lot. Just I actually find the opposite. And I think it's, it's pretty out of the way there. And yeah, I think I've grown to think like, appreciate it more as like, kind of a soft flex as well. When, like people people will ask about it or, like, you know, what, what's the thing on the back of your arm and it you know, people are usually like, surprised to hear if they didn't know already that that you were a diabetic. So it's been a good conversation starter too.

Scott Benner 1:01:44
I love that he said soft flex there was one time I started a conversation with somebody I said this is gonna seem like a weird flex but I have an incredibly popular diabetes pockets. Even as I was saying, and I was like I feel really douchey saying that out like for some reason. But you know, some some trying to jump into a conversation you need somebody going sometimes. Tell me in both your opinions you I'm assuming maybe both will have a different answer. But what's the best place you went? When you were doing you know, your your version of studying abroad? Where did you enjoy authority the most that you guys were at?

Tori 1:02:20
Oh, man. I mean, we I'm a big skier and Spence's big snowboarder, so we had some great I mean, I got it bar skiing days that I ever thought possible this past year. But Salt Lake was absolutely amazing. And then Aspen, Colorado was amazing. I mean, we did Kowai which is an island I've never been to in Hawaii earlier this spring. And it was absolutely breathtaking. Like it was stunning.

Scott Benner 1:02:43
How about you spent? You agree?

Spence 1:02:45
Yeah, yeah, I'd say big sky Montana and Aspen, Colorado were pretty spectacular. And then yeah, Mexico as well was was was just great.

Scott Benner 1:02:57
What's it? What did you learn about traveling with insolence stuff like that? Was there anything that you would tell people is an absolute must?

Tori 1:03:08
I actually I, one of my more recent trip, I got I got stopped and like patted down at the airport and like taken into a room for me to like, show them my pods and stuff. So I learned you got to bake in a little bit of extra time. But other than that, I've never really had an issue bringing stuff. I mean, I've learned to always been extras. And when I first started on the Omni pod we had we'd driven up to Bend Oregon. And there was a hot tub, and I thought it would be fine. But the Omnipod was not fine in the hot tub and I didn't bring enough extras.

Scott Benner 1:03:41
Did you cook the insulin? Or did it make the adhesive fall off?

Tori 1:03:44
No, the pod itself that the PDM wouldn't connect? It just stopped working?

Scott Benner 1:03:49
Oh, no kidding. That's fun. Yeah, you have to have a lot of I when we travel, I could probably take care of for people with diabetes for like a week. Because especially when you're just dealing like I have to say I guess if I'm in if we're in America, this is before COVID Like but if you're in America, I always feel like okay, we can get to supplies pretty easily if something goes wrong. And I don't feel like I have to have too many. But we have vacation a time or two in St. John. And so when we when we leave the contiguous then I'm like alright, like let's bring extra stuff with us. But Spencer, she said something earlier that you traveled once without insulin. Is that true? Or did I misunderstand her?

Spence 1:04:27
Um yeah, I don't I don't recall it. I I usually always travel with you.

Tori 1:04:34
When you are in like Australia or Southeast Asia years ago.

Spence 1:04:38
Yeah, yeah. So I I did a big nine month trip around the world after graduating undergrad, and one was on the Medtronic pump at one point in Bangkok, Thailand. Upon malfunction then all I had was fat fast and homologue and a few syringes and was a couple days before I was heading to Australia. And so I was basically just like giving my shot myself short acting shots, like very frequently of while waiting to go to Australia. So Medtronic could ship me a new pump to that international destination, because it's kind of a multi day lead time and wasn't sure where I would where I would be. So

Scott Benner 1:05:25
how few syringes did you have where you were using them? Yeah, yeah, I bet. Because that's the worst thing gonna happen to us. You run out of those, those, those syringes in that situation? So you didn't have any, you didn't have any? Well, obviously, you didn't have any Basal insulin. So you were just probably making small injections along the day. Did that? Did that mess up your plans? Like, did you end up hunkering down and doing that? Or did you just keep doing what you were doing?

Spence 1:05:52
Um, no. I mean, I certainly I don't think it was the smartest flight. But yeah, I I had an itinerary and a ticket booked and was traveling on a budget. And so I stuck with that and just kind of suffered through the 48 hours in Bangkok, in the hospital by myself, and then figured everything out when I got to Australia a few days later.

Scott Benner 1:06:14
Wow. I have to say that I understand you wanting to preface it and saying it wasn't the best thing to do. But I think it's great for people to hear that you got into a situation like that. And you You made your way through it. I'm assuming no CGM back then Right.

Spence 1:06:28
Oh, God, no. Yeah. I mean, it was. Yeah, checking a few times a day. And yeah, it this. This was only a couple years ago. So again, to the point of like, how quickly things have evolved for the better, at least in my personal management. It's just been kind of night and day traveling with CGM now versus backpacking with, you know, shots and a finger prick a couple years ago.

Scott Benner 1:06:55
Do you have? Do you have wanderlust? What they call wanderlust?

Spence 1:06:58
I think that would be an accurate diagnosis.

Scott Benner 1:07:01
Yeah. And Tori, how about you? Did you? Did you? were you diagnosed with it this year? Or did you always

Tori 1:07:07
know I'd love to travel I kind of did the the study abroad thing and undergrad, and then a little bit after college, but now it's great.

Scott Benner 1:07:14
That's really cool. It really is. I'm jealous of both of your travel schedules and and everything you've been able to accomplish and still good. What do you think you'll ever work toward? Or the school thing going to go on forever?

Tori 1:07:26
This school thing is working for me right now. But now we graduate next spring? So

Scott Benner 1:07:31
it'll be time to? Oh, boy, that'll be soul crushing for you guys. If you have to stay stable. Do you think that this COVID thing maybe is gonna make it possible for for you to have like tangible jobs without having to be tied to one area?

Tori 1:07:48
Yeah, I think especially in in the Bay Area. That's a that's been a thing that companies are really leaning into.

Scott Benner 1:07:56
It's interesting. Do you? Can I ask what do you guys like? What's your area of study?

Tori 1:08:04
Yeah, so we're getting our MBAs, which is kind of a more generalist degree, I guess. You don't have to really declare like a concentration or a major or anything. But I'm actually getting into healthcare. So kind of like health care companies,

Scott Benner 1:08:19
Spencer, your dating service teaching guys how to say the right thing. So what's going on here? Now? What do you do?

Spence 1:08:25
Not Not yet. I've actually been working in the cannabis space for the last couple years. So I'm currently doing a cannabis startup with with another classmate here. So very excited about that industry.

Scott Benner 1:08:36
That's a that's a great idea. The way things are going, what does smoking impact your blood sugar?

Spence 1:08:45
I don't really smoke, particularly in a lot. But the like cannabis ingestion in general, I don't, I haven't noticed a particular impact on blood sugars. But obviously the associated munchies and consumption of food that can go along with it. That that you have to be careful with.

Scott Benner 1:09:05
Are you saying you use edibles more often? Or?

Spence 1:09:09
Yeah, yeah, compared to smoking. Okay, Tori. I'm not a big consumer in general. But But yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:15
but you're getting the space that says so you see the value. So do you see it as a business thing or a value thing are both

Spence 1:09:22
primarily a business thing, but but I'm also pretty passionate just about the social equity component of cannabis and where the industries come from. So that's definitely a component to this

Scott Benner 1:09:32
article. I'll tell you I would be interested in talking about the the political ramifications of trying to get into this space because I imagine it's fascinating. Yeah, yeah. A lot of big companies are trying to take the space, right.

Spence 1:09:47
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, we could have a huge conversation about it, but there. It's definitely an example of if you have money and resources and can compile those quickly. You can enter the space and achieve success versus, you know, others trying to bootstrap it or mom and pop shops trying to get in. And the barriers to entry are much higher and more difficult. And so it's it varies state by state. But yeah, it's a good example of access to resources and what that can get you.

Scott Benner 1:10:20
Yeah. And Tory, you smoke a ton who you are nodding like crazy earlier. What are you doing?

Tori 1:10:25
Now? I mean, I think we've got we've had a lot of fun this year. But no, I mean, I think just in general, I don't notice an impact on my blood sugar's but it is, you know, I can kind of forget about them. And then I, you know, I won't be checking him for a while, then I'm like, Oh,

Scott Benner 1:10:41
I guess I should check that for a second. I thought I finally figured out why Tory wanted to be your friend. I was like, Oh, I see what's happening. On the ground floor of this. Do you have to know about growing? Or are you gonna hire a grower? Or how do you think about that?

Spence 1:10:57
Or for cannabis? Yeah. Um, I mean, there are many different business models, the the couple startups I was working for before did do all the growing in house themselves. You know, the the current business venture that I'm working on, where we're not growing anything ourselves, and in most most edible products are using some sort of distillate type based inputs. And there's a whole marketplace for that. And so you don't need to be vertically integrated and own the growing portion of the supply chain.

Scott Benner 1:11:30
I would imagine and I want to be sure that I say I'm more than a neophyte in this space. I only know what I hear from people. But I would assume like if you're going to be making edibles, if you could get them to be very consistent, that would be a big deal for people, right?

Spence 1:11:44
Absolutely. Yeah, that's huge. That's huge. And a big thing that we're we're going after with with an adventure,

Scott Benner 1:11:50
right? So that people don't end up like overdosing in an incredible amount of time. So I know you guys gotta go. And, and I want to thank you very much for doing this. Let me just ask, is there anything you want to say before you get out of here?

Tori 1:12:06
I don't think so. You can. I mean, you could find us on Instagram. We're starting like an Instagram together. I don't know if people want to follow us, but it's called an insulin influencers. So it's insulin and then influencers but they share the i n in the middle.

Scott Benner 1:12:21
Okay. All right, I will you send me the link, I'll put it in the show notes. These don't go up for a while. So I apologize. If it, it'll take a little bit of time. But thank you very much for doing this. Let me stop the recording. And thank you like real people, and I'll let you out of here. So

Spence 1:12:34
appreciate you know, it's been eye opening for me to see the know this podcast and what you know, parents like you and others are doing for us in the space. So thank you for what you're doing here.

Scott Benner 1:12:44
You're very kind. I appreciate you taking the time to do this I really do.

First, a huge thanks to Victorian Spence for coming on the program today and sharing their story with us. Thank you very much. I'd also like to thank the very capable and competent an all around bite. I'm gonna say great how Look at me. I'm trying not to say great for fun. Alright, let me try again. I'd also like to thank the very capable and incompetent blood glucose meter called the Contour Next One. Do you know it? It's clever, Deft and dexterous. And it's going to do for you. I mean, it's gonna do it's gonna give you good accurate blood sugar test. Contour next one.com forward slash juicebox. Man, I ran out of steam on that one. And now that I'm done, I'm seeing here ace, I could have been like the Contour. Next One blood glucose meter is an ace. It's aces. Oh, Aces. It's skilled and well versed in blood glucose meters in blood glucose. I really should write this down before I say it. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

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