Scott Benner 7/9/24 Scott Benner 7/9/24

#1248 Dill Pickle

Stacie was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 10. She shares her story of managing diabetes, overcoming a challenging family background and surviving a serious car accident.

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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 welcome to episode 1248 of the Juicebox Podcast

Well, here's one for you Stacy's 55 years old she was diagnosed when she was 10. She spent three days in a coma from her blood sugar at diagnosis. Her father was an alcoholic. Her mother was bipolar. She found out she was adopted later in life. She got into a car accident while she was pregnant with her son. This story has a little bit of everything. Please don't forget 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 healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin cozy earth.com use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 30% off of your entire cart. Those are the towels, the sheets, the clothes, anything you can find at cozy earth.com You'll save 30% with the offer code juice box at checkout links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D. Drink ag one.com/juice box. Don't forget for community you want the Juicebox Podcast Facebook group is called Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes there are currently 51,000 members it grows by 150 Every three days. Go over there and check it out.

Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, a company that's bringing people together to redefine what it means to live with diabetes. Later in this episode, I'll be speaking with Jalen, he was diagnosed with type one diabetes at 14. He's 29. Now he's going to tell you a little bit about his story. To hear more stories with Medtronic champions. Go to Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box or search the hashtag Medtronic champion on your favorite social media platform. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Dexcom dexcom.com/juice. Box get the brand new Dexcom G seven with my link and get started today.

Stacie 2:13
So my name is Stacy and I was actually diagnosed with type one diabetes. Exactly 45 years ago yesterday. Good to hear. Yeah.

Scott Benner 2:27
December 27. Hold on a second 40. You want to see if I can figure out what 45 years ago was? Sure. It shouldn't be hard, right? shouldn't be because it's 20. The end of 2023. So we're working with a pretty clean number here. So we use 2024. We take 24 off that takes you to 2000 Right. And we take 20 More authentication 89 up to 4479.

Stacie 2:56
I believe it's 1978.

Scott Benner 2:59
So close. All right. So I should have started with 2023. Not 2024. Yeah, that was my Mr. House. That's not my fault. Yeah, I was educated poorly. Okay, so December 27. And by the way, yes. I'm working a couple of days after Christmas. That's fine. By the way, most people are like, yeah, so sir. Wait. Podcast guy doesn't think we work after Christmas. No, no, I know. What do you find us? My goodness? How old were you?

Stacie 3:27
I was 10. Wow. Okay. Well, gosh. But yeah, that was surprised,

Scott Benner 3:35
huh? Yeah,

Stacie 3:36
it was a surprise. I was a really sick little kid. I really, you know, looking back on it, I can see it happening for a long time getting up in the middle of the night. You know, three, four times to go to the bathroom. I would cut my hands underneath the faucet and let water run into my hands and stick my face into that little pool of water in my hands and just suck it out like a straw. I was so thirsty. And Christmas came and my sister was home for Christmas. She was 12 years older, and lived on the other side of the state. And I wanted to go back with her so badly to spend some time with her, which I often did as a kid. And it was a three hour drive. And it was Christmas Eve or Christmas day when we we took the drive and my parents were like, No, she's not. She's not feeling so good. She doesn't look so good. And I'm like, I'll be fine. I'll be fine. I want to go so bad. So they let me go. And I remember I mean it was dark out. Everything was closed. I had to go to the bathroom so bad. We stopped. I remember stepping once at a police state Shouldn't along the way, because there were people there and I could use the bathroom and then another step at I think it was like an assisted living place. And then we made another step at her aunt's house. And then we finally get to her house. They thought I had the flu. So of course, I'm drinking orange juice. She had to work during the day. And so her roommate would come home and I just, I wanted a 711 Slurpee so bad. So she'd take me down to 711 and I get a Slurpee. My parents called one night to see how I was doing. And I remember they put me on the phone. And I could hardly talk. I was so sick. I remember just being so tired and weak. They said to my sister, get her to the emergency room. So we went to the emergency room. I remember her carrying me into the hospital. And then I went into a coma. I remember going into the, to the room. They walked in and they knew right away. I had type one. I passed out and I was in a coma for three days. Oh my gosh. Did a blood sugar of 12 180. Can

Scott Benner 6:17
I ask you, Stacy, you said you were a sick little kid. Did you mean in that moment or for your whole life?

Stacie 6:22
No, in that moment, okay. Yeah, I think I had been sick for a while looking back on it. You know, looking at pictures. I just remember being really thirsty all the time and peeing all the time. And I think that was going on for a while.

Scott Benner 6:39
Younger people have to appreciate that in 1978 if they thought you had the flu, you got orange juice, and that was it.

Stacie 6:45
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Orange juice.

Scott Benner 6:50
Is their stomach upset. Give her ginger ale, ginger ale and orange juice. See you people you complain about life, but I was alive back then. We had I got the what I have the one time bronchitis. Can you imagine bronchitis? Do you know how I got through bronchitis? I sat on the sofa and watch television. Oh, yes. That was it. I was in immense pain. I could not breathe horrible. Like you know fevers in and out, like passing out for hours at a time waking back up. I got ginger ale are introduced and television. There's no medicine. No one took you to a doctor. No, they were like, I wonder if this one will live. Let's find out. Oh, gosh. Parents are like, by the way, also 1978 This isn't in your Toyota Camry. This is some rust bucket with air blowing through the doors and you can't hear a damn thing when you're on the highway because it's so loud in the car. And you're lucky if the thing stops when you step on the brake. It's a car from the 70s You guys don't even know. God. Damn, Stacy. You're lucky to be alive. Oh, yeah. No, you really are lucky to be alive. So you were in a coma for three days? Yeah, get out of here. Oh my gosh.

Stacie 8:04
I remember coming to and hearing voices all around me. My parents were there. And all of a sudden, I was laying there my eyes closed. And I'm like I smell dill pickles.

Scott Benner 8:17
Dexcom g7 offers an easier way to manage diabetes without finger sticks. It is a simple CGM system that delivers real time glucose numbers to your smartphone, your smartwatch. And it effortlessly allows you to see your glucose levels and where they're headed. My daughter is wearing a Dexcom g7 Right now, and I can't recommend it enough. Whether you have commercial insurance, Medicare coverage, or no CGM coverage at all Dexcom can help you go to my link dexcom.com/juice box and look for that button that says Get a free benefits check. That'll get you going with Dexcom. When you're there, check out the Dexcom clarity app where the follow Did you know that people can follow your Dexcom up to 10 people can follow you. Right now I'm following my daughter but my wife is also following her. Her roommates at school are following her. So I guess Arden is being followed right now by five people who are concerned for her health and welfare. And you can do the same thing. School Nurses, your neighbor, people in your family. Everyone can have access to that information if you want them to have it. Or if you're an adult and you don't want anyone to know, you don't have to share with anybody. It's completely up to you. dexcom.com/juice box links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com. And when you use my link to learn about Dexcom you're supporting the podcast. This episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box and now we're going to hear from Medtronic champion. Jalen was

Speaker 1 9:53
going straight into high school so it was a summer getting into high school was that particularly difficult, unimaginable Oh, you know, I missed my entire summer. So I went, I was going to a brand new school, I was around a bunch of new people that I had not been going to school with. So it was hard trying to balance that while also explaining to people what type one diabetes was. My hometown did not have an endocrinologist. So I was traveling over an hour to the nearest endocrinologist for children. So you know, outside of that I didn't have any type of support in my hometown.

Scott Benner 10:26
Did you try to explain to people or did you find it easier just to stay private?

Speaker 1 10:31
I honestly I just held back I didn't really like talking about it. It was just, it felt like it was just an repeating record where I was saying things and people weren't understanding it. And I also was still in the process of learning it. So I just kept it to myself didn't really talk about it. Did

Scott Benner 10:46
you eventually find people in real life that you could confide in. I

Speaker 1 10:51
never really got the experience until after getting to college. And then once I graduated college, it's all I see. You know, you can easily search Medtronic champions, you see people that pop up and you're like, wow, look at all this content. And I think that's something that motivates me started embracing more. You know, how I'm able to type one diabetes, Medtronic

Scott Benner 11:11
diabetes.com/juice box to hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community.

Stacie 11:17
And I heard my mom's voice and my Mom, have you been eating dill pickles? I want to dill pickle so bad. Wait, why is she eating a pickle? Well, she they had been to lunch, and she had added dill pickle. And I could smell it on her breath. And I wanted to dill pickle so bad. Everybody was so excited. I was awake. Yeah,

Scott Benner 11:45
no kidding. Three days, they basically thought they were like, how are we going to get the orange shoe center when she's sleeping? By the way, Stacy really quickly. Let's get back to the dill pickle in a second. But do you think people listening heard air blowing through the doors of a car and thought that's not true?

Stacie 12:03
Oh, gosh. Well, yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. It

Scott Benner 12:07
is true. By the way, for those of you listening, they didn't seal that well. And air like cold air. Like in the middle of the winter. You have to wear your jacket, the damn car, the heating barely worked. Air conditioning.

Stacie 12:18
I think my sister brought me across the state in Nova. Yes, it was exactly that. You could hear the air and it was freezing in there. You

Scott Benner 12:28
can hear the air blowing through. It's freezing cold. The defroster doesn't work. The brakes are for crap. There's no you know, power steering sometimes. And cars. People are like cranking on the wheel to make a turn. And above all that the motor is going like this the entire time you're driving. Oh.

Stacie 12:47
And vinyl seats. Yeah,

Scott Benner 12:48
but don't worry, because the radio works once in a great while you all complain your joke. I'll tell you right now, by the way, and go back 50 years before me. And that Nova looks like a leather sofa. Oh my god. No one knows. Anyway, this is not the point. The point is dill pickles saved your life. That's what I'm hearing.

Stacie 13:09
Oh, I'm pretty sure that's it. And I've been obsessed with them ever since. So

Scott Benner 13:15
yeah. You've had you've had your fair share of dill pickles. Oh, yes.

Stacie 13:19
Did they go get yourself? I don't remember that. I'm sure eventually they did. Yeah, no.

Scott Benner 13:24
Oh, that's amazing. You just kind of popped open asking for pickles. Huh? Yes. And no, no. deficits. Nothing, right?

Stacie 13:33
No. Wow.

Scott Benner 13:35
It's just dumb luck. That's really dumb luck. Because if you hadn't gone with your sister, your parents would have figured it out sooner. I imagine.

Stacie 13:42
If I hadn't gone with my sister. They said I would have died within an hour.

Scott Benner 13:48
Oh, wait, when you went to the emergency room? Yeah, no. Yeah. No, you were on your way. Yeah, for sure. Because you you probably use the last little bit of Will you had to make it to the hospital. And then you pass out when you got there. Yeah, gosh, boy, that's crazy. How long do you remember how long you were in the hospital after that?

Stacie 14:04
Two weeks. Geez. I was in the hospital and one side of the state and I lived with my parents on the other side of the state. So I was in that hospital until after the new year. And then they transported me to the hospital in my hometown. That was there for quite a while to just trying to get regulated and teach me what I needed to know. They wouldn't let me leave the hospital until I gave my own shot.

Scott Benner 14:35
Yeah. Isn't that something that was that was what you needed to know back then. Oh, yeah. It was so important. Did you get this needle and you can you're good. Gosh, what insulin Do you recall? It

Stacie 14:47
was the beef and pork insulin. It was two different kinds. Mix them in one syringe in the syringes. Oh my gosh, the needles were ginormous. that's in the head. Visible birds on them. Yeah, they

Scott Benner 15:04
tear through your skin right? Oh, God, they were awful birds. Yeah. So tell people did you have like a sharpening stone that used to have to sharpen the needles with?

Stacie 15:14
No, no stone just had the burrs right in, I think. And I swear the needles were an inch long.

Scott Benner 15:24
They were big. Do you recall? Like the discomfort from it, you recall it still are now? Yes, you do.

Stacie 15:32
Well, and not only that. So once I was discharged from the hospital, my dad had to take me to the hospital every single morning for a couple of weeks to get a fasting blood draw. Because there was no other way to tell what my blood sugar was running. So every morning, we would go to the hospital, and I get a blood draw. And at that point, after spending two weeks in the hospital, and then another two weeks getting poked every morning, there was nothing left, like my arms. I remember my arms were black and blue. My hands were black and blue. It was pretty traumatic. And after that, and to this day, I have a tremendous fear of needles.

Scott Benner 16:20
I bet you do. What do you how do you manage today,

Stacie 16:24
I use a little self hypnosis. I go to the same lab every single time to get my blood drawn. Because I am familiar with the environment. And the people there are really good at doing it. I made a mistake once of going to a different lab. There was this newbie, drawing blood. She had a nerve in my arm. And I got the tunnel vision. I was throwing up passing out it was a terrible experience, like a panic attack. Yeah, I knew it was coming. Like she hit that she had the nerve. And, you know, it was a little nervous anyway, and I said, I just I freaked out and get it out. You hit a nerve. And I sat there and I was trying to relax and do the deep breathing. And then all of a sudden tunnel vision started and I'm like, well, here it goes. I knew this was gonna happen

Scott Benner 17:25
to you have to look at the needle or do you have to look away from it? Oh, I

Stacie 17:29
can't look at it. No. Arden stares at it. Oh,

Scott Benner 17:32
like I'm just gonna say like a mental patient but I don't think that's the thing we can say anymore. But she stare she does. She stares at it like a mental but she stairs and stairs and stairs, the stairs and I'm like Arden. Why don't you look away? She was I need to see it happen. I'm like what? Oh, she hates it, too.

Stacie 17:47
I can't even watch a movie that has sharp objects in it. Yeah,

Scott Benner 17:51
no kidding. Well, I mean, you spend enough time being stabbed by by the way. Do you think people know what a bar is? Like? Like the needles would tear a little bit and then they get these little bumps of metal on them. And a lot of people that I've talked to you from back then sorry, Stacy. But back then, like they would talk about like a whetstone where they'd sharpen their own needles, but it sounds like they were just like, you'll be fine. Just shove that in there. So Oh, and you're not fine. You have a Arden's taking ozempic Right now, like really low doses of it. She's only been doing it for a couple of weeks. And we've been seeing about by the way, it's cut her insulin use significantly. Oh, wow. But she's kidding, like a quarter of a milligram in, you know, from a pen. And my God, she's like, Dad, I'm allergic to needles, and I'm like, what? And she goes, it hurts. And I was like, I don't disbelieve her. Oh, by the way, because she's pretty tough kid about a lot of stuff. And she's like, I just really I hate getting poked like that. And I mean, you guys know, at this point, like it's an insulin pen. It's not a very big needle. Boy, she's like, Oh, it hurts afterwards for a while and like, interesting, you know? But yeah, she not a fan. And she was doing okay, for the first number of like, years actually with diabetes. But I will never forget the time in the office. They came in to give her a blood draw. And she was little they used to, they didn't take her to the like the phlebotomist room at the end of they used to do it right there because it's kind of friendlier in the room and everything. And one day after years of it being okay. She just recoiled into a corner and I thought she was going to climb right through the ceiling to get away from them and she has not been okay with them since then. So, yeah, something actually alright. So I feel for you because I've seen it. You're not MDI though. Now?

Stacie 19:41
No, no, no. Okay. Interesting. You know, my parents were told I wasn't gonna make it out of my 20s Oh, really? I can't even imagine. You know, being a parent and having them say that. You know, when I was growing up, we never we never talked about diabetes. We never do. talked about my care. We just lived life, I took my shots. And my mom was a really good cook. You know, she would cook a really good dinner every night. But I just took my shot before breakfast, went out to play, came home for dinner. And that was that we we never talked about it. And I think they just wanted me to live the most normal life that they thought I could live. And it was, it just was never discussed, because they thought you were gonna die. I believe so. I think that was the reasoning behind it.

Scott Benner 20:38
Like, if this is what's gonna happen to her, then we'll just make it as good as it

Stacie 20:44
can be. Yeah, we want to give her the best life she can live and we're not gonna live under this stress.

Scott Benner 20:51
Are they alive? Still? No, my

Stacie 20:53
dad passed away when I was 23 When my mom passed away four years ago.

Scott Benner 21:02
Oh, wow. Your dad had a heart attack?

Stacie 21:05
Yes, yeah. Well, he he had several heart attacks. And then what finally took him was a stroke.

Scott Benner 21:13
I'm not a soothsayer. It's just that time, man. It's about what would happen if you died early. You know, a ton of

Stacie 21:19
he smoked. Oh, two three packs of cigarettes a day and he had chronic alcoholism.

Scott Benner 21:28
I will. I'll tell you what, I might be an alcoholic. If you told my kid was gonna die. In their 20s Yeah, my father used to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day too. So I mean, it was just like non stop. It was one after another. I've seen my dad. Yeah, I've seen my dad smoke in the shower.

Stacie 21:44
Oh, yeah.

Scott Benner 21:48
So not uncommon. Anyway, next time beer like nobody should tell me what to do. I don't need to be told that vape pens aren't good for me. Yeah, apparently we need new people to tell us sometimes what's okay. Because when no one was telling you it was bad. My father was smoking in the shower. Please wrap your head around that for a second. He was up lighting a cigarette at the side of the bed. had it done before he got in the shower lit another one while he was in there because he couldn't be away from it too long. was smoking while he was eating while he was eating. I can't believe I'm alive. Actually. him leaving my mom might have saved my life. And my brother's perfectly honest. Because the house secondhand smoke. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. My mom did die of cancer eventually. So I don't know. I still might not be out of this different time for sure. Also, they were probably like if she's not going to live much longer. Let's not spend money on extra needles. Well, how did you how did you read

Stacie 22:50
those bird needles?

Scott Benner 22:52
I mean, listen, we love her and all but times are tight and booze isn't cheap. Other brothers and sisters?

Stacie 23:02
Yes, I have. Let me figure this out. I have two half brothers and three half sisters. Okay.

Scott Benner 23:12
Two half brothers, three half sisters. Do any of them have any autoimmune issues?

Stacie 23:17
On my mother's side? So my grandfather, my mother and my sister all have or had lupus. My sister was recently diagnosed with shrunk grins. Yeah. My dad's side I have a sister with Ms. And ants with rheumatoid arthritis.

Scott Benner 23:47
Do and you're

Stacie 23:51
up in that like

Scott Benner 23:54
Viking part of the country right? Like in Wisconsin II Michigan Guinea like in that space up there. Michigan Yeah. And now where the Vikings landed something like that. Yeah,

Stacie 24:05
probably somewhere in those lakes. Yeah,

Scott Benner 24:09
well they wanted the water they liked the water they got inland they were like where's the water? He said those boats with the big things in the front now there's no water. So they probably went to a lake that's what I'm getting that but a lot of like, European background. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. You bet you're the only type one tell me about your A onesies growing up and

Stacie 24:30
and how they went? Okay, so I don't remember there even being a one CS until I was maybe late high school. Definitely. In college. I remember even when CS being discussed. Again. It was just it was a fasting blood draw in the morning and that's that's how they made treatment decisions. If I was blood sugar was high then the doctor would up My insulin, I was expected to bring in numbers and a booklet. Like I know a lot of people had to do. But I fed the numbers all the time, I didn't want to disappoint anybody. And I didn't want to look like I was failing. And at the same time, didn't know how to take care of myself. I don't think my parents knew how to really follow. We didn't count carbs or anything like that, right. So they just fed me good food. And I took my shots. And that was it. I was extremely, and still athletic, into all the sports, a lot of activities. And I think that's what's saved me all my life. I've been very active. I don't sit still much. The funny thing I was thinking about this the other day, you know, looking back on my whole life, I never experienced a low blood sugar ever, up until into my late 20s. Because

Scott Benner 26:06
your blood sugar was always high. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. How high do you think it was most of the time. I'm a big fan of starting every day the same way. That's why I enjoy my morning routine that includes ag one. I put my trust into ag one because unlike so many products, their entire formula is backed by research studies. Ag one has been third party tested for safety for years, and it is trusted by experts and medical professionals, giving you one less thing to research on your own. In one study at the 30 day, Mark 80% of people in this study noticed the less gas and bloating How about that? And 97% of people in that same research study felt more energy at 60 days. 82% of people in a research study feel less stressed, we can all use with that. Are you kidding me? Less stress, fewer farts, ag one baby. If there's one product I trust to support my whole body health and to keep me from farting. It's a big one. And that's why I've partnered with them for so long. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by ag one and it's easy and satisfying to start your journey with them today. Try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin d3 k two and five free ag one travel bags with your first purchase at drink ag one.com/juice box that's drink ag one.com/juice box, check it out. Well,

Stacie 27:32
when they started doing the E onesies. I was 1415 pretty consistently. And I would go to the doctor and now this was back in college. I go to the doctor and the doctor would say you gotta do better. And you know, you've got this a one C A 14 And that's not good. And you got to do better. And I'm like, okay, whatever. You know, I, again, I wasn't given the tools or the resources when I was younger. And neither were my parents. And we we just kind of ignored it.

Scott Benner 28:12
Do you think they ever looked at you and we're like, oh my god, she's still alive. We not think we're gonna have to send her to college. Or,

Stacie 28:18
like I said, my dad had a problem with alcohol. My mother had an untreated mental illness. It was a very stressful environment. I think the two of them were very protective of me. They they loved and adored me. They were great people. But there were certainly a lot of issues. And I found myself as I was getting a little bit older, kind of becoming the parent. When I went off to college, like I couldn't wait to go off to college because I needed to get out of that environment.

Scott Benner 28:58
What did your mom have that wasn't being helped? I

Stacie 29:01
believe she had bipolar. But she she had a lot of auditory hallucinations and little delusions of grandeur. And my dad felt like he couldn't do anything about it because she was extremely opinionated. And she would make your life hell if you tried to tell her that. She needed some help. To her. She was fine. Okay. Yeah,

Scott Benner 29:36
that's a lot to deal with. For sure. So a onesies fourteens in college. How long did that continue for?

Stacie 29:44
Let me think when I got out of college, I went to work. I got married right away. I got pregnant and that's when you know, the doctor said no Have you really, we really got to get a control on this. So that's, I started checking my sugar with a glucometer, which I had never done and taking more injections. You know, I was taking, you know, two to three shots a day. How old are you when you're pregnant? I was one, two. And then I had my first child when I was 23. And then I had my second one, I was 24. So my kids are 12 and a half months apart.

Scott Benner 30:30
They see got pregnant before it got married or got married, then got pregnant, got married and then got pregnant. Okay, so that's like, at, like, 1990 ish.

Stacie 30:42
Around there. My daughter was born in 90. Okay. No, my daughter was born in 92.

Scott Benner 30:48
But you got married around it.

Stacie 30:52
I got married in 91.

Scott Benner 30:54
And right out of college, so was this a hate? Are you still married? To somebody different? Were you like, I will marry the first person who makes it? I don't have to go back home with those two.

Stacie 31:06
You know, kind of Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Benner 31:10
So married a college sweetheart. No,

Stacie 31:13
I married an older man that I met where I was working. And oh, that's a whole story in itself. Let me tell him. I mean, we don't want to go down a rabbit hole. Because what

Scott Benner 31:28
do you see like Security money, like Security money, a guy who wasn't drunk like that kind of stuff. He was

Stacie 31:34
narcissistic, manipulative, made everything look just wonderful. The outside and at the beginning. I became pretty codependent. And it was it was terrible.

Scott Benner 31:50
And but your child is with him? Both of them. My

Stacie 31:55
two children are with him. Okay. All right. Got it. How long did that last? That lasted until in 97. So the kids were just three and four. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 32:11
So the doctor says we have to get this better. Speaking about your agency when you're when you're pregnant? And the answer was take a couple more injections a day. And we're going to start using a meter in in the night. God 12 years after you've had diabetes. You started using a meter? Yes. Wow. That crazy, isn't it? Now when you look back at it, don't do you not see that and think

Stacie 32:35
that's insane. Oh, god, yeah. You have no idea how I feel.

Scott Benner 32:42
Ya know, just oh my gosh, how did that happen? Right? And why did somebody not tell you sooner?

Stacie 32:49
Oh, my word. They just assumed it. I knew

Scott Benner 32:52
where they're not meters, or where their meters and you just didn't have one. When

Stacie 32:57
I was pregnant with my daughter, my first child, my doctor and he was a PCP. He's like, we got to put you in the hospital. You got to we got to get some better control over this. So he had mitad me to the hospital where I sat in a bed, you know, I'm feeling I felt I wasn't sick. And you know how it is you any everybody talks about it, you go into the hospital. And nurses can't do anything without doctor's orders. Doctor's orders don't come in until like two in the afternoon. I'm sitting there. I'm asking for insulin injections. They're not giving them to me because the doctor didn't order it. I need to move because I can't sit still I like to go on walks and hikes and exercise. And I was confined to this room. And I remember arguing with them going saying this is making it worse I need to exercise. Anyway, that's where I get my first glucometer was in the hospital. Then I discharged myself from the hospital without any support from the doctor. So I signed papers and I left

Scott Benner 34:18
by the way at that point still are using regular an MPH at that point. I'm just guessing because early 90s Yeah, I

Stacie 34:25
think I was and

Scott Benner 34:27
so they had you injecting a little more insulin to try to bring your blood sugar's down somewhat and test a little bit still are not coming down much I would imagine because you still haven't experienced a low blood sugar

Stacie 34:37
to be honest with you now that think back on it. I was I wasn't better control. I did experience some low blood sugars while I was pregnant because that was my second pregnancy. I get into a terrible car accident.

Scott Benner 34:53
Oh, so not in the first one. But in that way in your second pregnancy. You had a car accident? Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's scary. Especially because, yeah, so were you in the hospital after the accident?

Stacie 35:05
Yeah, yes, I'm pregnant. I was three months pregnant. And I had, I had had my daughter with me and I passed out at the wheel and slipped the car like five or six times, and ended up in the hospital.

Scott Benner 35:23
You know, it's almost impossible to roll a car over nowadays are engineered so well.

Stacie 35:30
Not in the 90s. And

Scott Benner 35:32
the doors, they keep out air and everything. They're very, very fancy nowadays. You right? Wow, that's insane. So low blood sugar. You passed out? Yeah. Oh, gosh. And that everyone's okay.

Stacie 35:46
My daughter, who was, gosh, she was seven months old. She broke her collarbone. And that's it. I had a concussion and a bunch of bruising. And son who I was pregnant with was fine.

Scott Benner 36:02
Was she in a seat? Did they have Did you have a car seat?

Stacie 36:05
He had a car seat. But they didn't make those the way they make them now, either. She, oh, this is so scary. I remember. It was a very warm September day. And I had the windows all partially rolled down because I was my blood sugar was low. I was trying to get home. I wasn't thinking right. I had some sugar. Like I taken some. And I thought I am almost home. I'm gonna get there. I'm almost there. I passed out. And I remember flipping through the air and landed in a ditch. And my daughter had flown out of the car seat out the window and ended up in a cornfield about trying to think 100 feet from the car. She's She just broke her collarbone. She just broke her collarbone.

Scott Benner 37:11
She's not weird or anything when you talk to her. I'm just kidding. That when you see there's never a moment when you're like, oh, maybe it's not the more happened in that car accident. Nothing like that.

Stacie 37:20
I can't say that. Oh, you're the way you weren't because I dropped you on your head. You are the way you are because you flew out of the car window. I

Scott Benner 37:29
flung you into a cornfield. That's why yes, that's insane. Like, God, that's crazy. Did they wake you up with dill pickles? By any chance at the accident scene?

Stacie 37:40
I probably would have come to faster. I'm just gonna say

Scott Benner 37:43
if they if they knew that. They knew to use that as smelling salts for you then. Probably. So I'm sorry. You wake up your blood sugar's low. Do they know you have diabetes? Yes.

Stacie 37:55
Because the volunteer firemen. That was the first on the scene. He was who we rented our house from. And he knew that I was type one. Oh

Scott Benner 38:09
my gosh. And so they revive you? Do they have the baby at that point? Or?

Stacie 38:14
Well, like I remember coming to and, you know, in and out of consciousness. And all I could say was my baby, my baby. And he knew I had a baby too. And he's like, the babies with you and like, is she not in the car? And then all of a sudden people were, you know, lined up and walking through the cornfields looking for the baby Jesus Christ.

Scott Benner 38:41
Do you call her Children of the Corn? When she acts? Oh, that's

Stacie 38:45
a that's a good idea.

Scott Benner 38:47
If I was there, that's what would happen. So it's too late now. I mean, she's probably Yeah, she's probably she's probably in her 20s now. Yeah,

Stacie 38:56
she is. 31 Wow, gosh, that's really

Scott Benner 39:00
something got dim as white people come on telly. There's no way you thought you're going to tell that story when you got on the podcast today.

Stacie 39:06
No, I I had like I had a whole outline of other things. Yeah,

Scott Benner 39:11
no, I don't care about that stuff. That's incredible. Now, in your note to me, you say that you're a onesies now, but in the sixes forever. So at what point? And what tools did you get that changed all that for you? After

Stacie 39:26
my divorce. I went back to work to where I was previously working, which was a vocational rehab workshop for people with injuries and developmental disabilities. And there was this young man, I believe he was like 22 or 23 years old. He had had his leg amputated because he was a type one and didn't take care of himself. And all my co workers were like, Oh, you got to talk to this guy. You got to talk to him, You got to knock some sense into him, you got to tell him how to take care of himself. And I just remember thinking, I don't even know how to take care of myself, How can I tell somebody else? How to take care of themselves. At this point I was maybe 28 years old,

Scott Benner 40:21
you're probably thinking I should ask him advice about how to get around with one leg because I, you're probably closer to him than he is to be in you. Exactly. And you weren't, you're no great shakes at that point. So that is that what scared you

Stacie 40:33
I was a single parent. And I'm like, I have got to figure this out. I, you know, the doctors and helping me. Yeah, it was it was a scary thing. I went home, and I pulled the glucometer out of the drawer and wipe the dust off of it. And I'm like, you're here I go, I'm going to see some bad numbers. And I just started poking my finger. And making adjustments on my own. I was still exercising all the time, extremely competitive in sports. And I just made it a new challenge for myself. I'm going to get good at this. I started ordering magazines and read them all the time and you know, learn some new tricks, eating better. And that's what I just did. And over the years, I just continued to do that. Cuz I wanted to get good at it and be proud of myself for it. Eventually, an MDI, I was consistently in the low sixes. And I've been probably for the last five years, I haven't had an A one C over 5.6.

Scott Benner 41:50
That's amazing. Did you know that that meter was just for pregnancy? The minute you Yeah, the minute you were done having your son you're like, Oh, thank God and put that thing away. Yeah, yeah, I know. Right. back to it again. Do you have any complications? Zero. That's great. Yeah, one that's even insane about how you feel like did you notice yourself feel better eventually? Well, yeah,

Stacie 42:14
that was that was the thing like I had lived so long with high blood sugar's I had no idea how terrible I felt. Until I got those sugars down. And I had so much energy, I couldn't think clearly. You know, I think of like, back in school, when I was in college, I was a good student, but man, it took me a long time to get it. Like, I feel like I could have done so much better in so many things. If I had stable blood sugars in once I was able to get all of that under control. Like I got more motivation for myself, I wanted to take good care of my kids. I saw things just much more clear. And I didn't want to feel crappy anymore. Like I learned, you know, how I felt when I was stable, compared to when those sugars were high. I never wanted to go back there. That's how I am now to like, I have absolutely no desire to eat poorly. I do once in a while, because probably everybody does. And I regret it. And it's just not worth it to hear.

Scott Benner 43:34
I had a couple of cookies over Christmas, and I put a pound on and I had that same thought this morning. I was like, I could have just not had those cookies. Yeah, what's it worth? It? Really doesn't because now I gotta get rid of this pound again. And then I'm like, You know what I'm like, and that's not a thing I was paying attention to until I was paying attention to it. Really? Sure. Yeah. So similar for you. So not really so much about like, I gotta be here for these kids. But more about like, I want to be proud of myself. I want to like, take take over. Is that how you felt? Yeah,

Stacie 44:08
I wanted to have control. I felt like I there were so many things leading up till that I had no control over, you know, thinking about how I was raised and you know, dealing with my parents issues. My whole first marriage was very disappointing. I totally lacked any self control in that relationship. He had total control. Yeah, once I was on my own and I could see all that. I'm like, that's it I need to get control of my life and, and do better for myself and feel better. And I want to excel at this.

Scott Benner 44:52
Yeah. And you used magazines and any information you could find.

Stacie 44:56
Yes, because the internet wasn't really

Scott Benner 44:59
it. Oh, yeah, no, it's so interesting, right? Like the internet's not going to help you, at some point doesn't exist. And I just, it made me feel like 25 years from now someone will be on whatever the equivalent of a podcast is gonna be like, I just wanted to take control when I started listening this thing called the Juicebox. Podcast, like, you know, and it'll sound so old the people like when you just said magazines, people big oh my god, do you remember podcasts? So quaint? They used to come on your phone. Do you remember phones? Before our brains could talk to each other? Yeah, we used to have these phones in our hands. They were such a relic. Maybe? I think there's one in the Smithsonian, if you want to go see it still. Oh, my God, that's crazy. Good for you. And never turned back? Do you have an eating style that you use? Or do you just kind of eat what you want, but in reasonable measure,

Stacie 45:52
I stay away from processed foods. I have a low ish carb diet, like I stay very consistent. So you know, breakfast, it's 15, carbs, lunch, it's 15 to 20, carbs, dinner, I won't go over, you know, 22 to 25 carbs. It's just very consistent. If we go out to eat, we only go out to eat like once a month. And we'll go to the same places where I am comfortable. Knowing what to you know how to dose because I don't like plan that chasing game. Don't want to, you know, eat something and then be chasing the sugars up and down. Yeah.

Scott Benner 46:37
Well, I think it's fantastic that you that you made it through all this and your second marriage went okay, this guy's better.

Stacie 46:43
Oh, gosh, yeah, we've been together over 25 years. And yeah, he's, he's awesome. We have a lot of fun together. We have my kids. Well, my my son has two boys. And so we're grandparents. And my daughter recently got married and she's got a baby on the way. So that's how you girls do it. Apparently. Quick. She's She waited a little

Scott Benner 47:15
longer. Yeah. I was just teasing. Do you to have children together? Or you have the twofold first just to to Okay. Yeah. Yeah, well, also everyone in your life and set the bar so low that this guy could be a pretty big jerk. And you wouldn't even know it.

Stacie 47:34
Oh, no, I had pretty high expectations when I met.

Scott Benner 47:39
You did? I bet you set the bar pretty high. You're like, I'm not doing that again with those people. Oh, yeah. Nice. Your mom to hang on so long to get help for the bipolar?

Stacie 47:52
No, she didn't cut my story with My poor mom is another long rabbit hole. No, she was pretty hard to deal with for for many years. And at one point, I kind of walked away from the relationship because it it just wasn't good. For me. It was very stressful. Sure. Then maybe about eight years later, I, you know, she hadn't seen the kids since they were little. And they were, you know, senior and junior in high school. And I'm like, This is ridiculous. Like, she just loved those kids so much. And she was missing out. And we I've finally slowly developed a relationship with her again. And at that point, I tried to learn how to see things from her point of view and why she was the way she was. She had a terrible upbringing, mental health issues in her family. I just tried to be more understanding even though I didn't believe the way she believed or thought the way she thought. I just became more empathetic and sympathetic with her and she softened up a lot as she got older. And by the end, we had a really good relationship. I'm

Scott Benner 49:19
glad. That's lovely. Yeah, wait for you. It's nice to have you to go back and try again. Honestly. You did it for your kids, or you did it because you thought about how much your mom missed. It's the kids what pushed you? I

Stacie 49:32
felt like my my mom had pushed everybody out of her life. She had no relationships with anybody. She was pretty much homebound. And I was she was missing out on her family and her kids that she adored. I wanted her to see the kids and I was proud of my children and how they grew up and You're not the kind of people they turned into. And I wanted her to see that. That's nice.

Scott Benner 50:05
That's really nice. Oh, wow, you've been through it. Here. Oh,

Stacie 50:10
you have no idea. I didn't even tell you about the whole attraction thing.

Scott Benner 50:14
Wait, that's right. Okay, hold on. Let me let me focus myself. I want to say that when you said you thought your mom might be bipolar, that didn't shock me when you said because you had said mental health concerns then went back to perhaps bipolar. When I asked people about other autoimmune stuff in their life, I usually say How about any, like, bipolar stuff, and really unbalanced amount of people say oh, yeah, my aunt, my mom, my grandmother was bipolar. Like, I think it's all

Stacie 50:48
inflammation somehow. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You

Scott Benner 50:52
know what I mean? Yep. But as everyone's listening, your dad's an alcoholic. Your mom's bipolar. And you sound so like, not those things. And you could wonder why you're listening the whole time. How is that possible? But here's how it's possible. Go ahead.

Stacie 51:09
I was the most stable, emotionally stable person that my entire family. You were adopted. But I was adopted.

Scott Benner 51:18
It was screwy in my head that you were 10. And your sister was 22. And so I thought like late in life baby or something late in life adoption?

Stacie 51:27
No, I was adopted as an infant. My adopted dad had been married before and had two kids. And my adopted mother was younger than my dad didn't have kids, but didn't want to have kids. Like she was scared to death of childbirth. So they wanted to adopt a baby. They're best friends. He was a doctor. And he knew this, you know, this woman was coming in to see him for her pregnancy. And she wanted to give her baby up for adoption. And this doctor said, I've got the perfect family for you.

Scott Benner 52:17
We've got a bipolar lady and a drunken guy. We're gonna slide your kid and it's gonna be fine. Welcome to 1978 A right actually 1960 1968 Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've got the perfect people. They're upright.

Stacie 52:35
Well, they were sky. I mean, really, they they were like my dad, other than the motional stuff. Like they provided a fantastic home. We get a good family business. The finances were there. They were very involved in the community. I mean, they the issues came a little bit later. Okay. Well,

Scott Benner 53:01
yeah. Also, I guess you'll never really know their whole story, either. You know, without without really sitting and talking to them. I don't know, how you feel like when you stop and look at like, where the zigs and zags come from, like, Oh, I just wanted to be proud of myself. So I took care of my diabetes, where I use the meter, because the doctor like foisted it on me, but they tried to stick me in it like those little stories, those moments that, that reframe things for people, we don't know what they are, you know, it's not until you sit down, you might talk to your mom and find out that she had all kinds of like, problems, you know, growing up, and she might have been lucky to be as together as she was. Yeah, yes. Right. And maybe your father started drinking because your mom was bipolar. And he loved her so much. He didn't know what to do. Like I haven't.

Stacie 53:45
Yeah, you can look at it right there. Yeah, that's definitely what happened.

Scott Benner 53:50
Yeah, I know, trust me. I've had a lot of these conversations. I know what happens. Actually, it's frustrating. Sometimes they see because as I feel like a historian of humanity, on some level, and like, like having had so many conversations with people, you can see the bellwethers. And you can see the detours, and you can see the stuff that derails people and that what brings them back. And as it's happening in real time. I sit there sometimes listening to people talk in my real life. And I think, Oh, don't do that. That's like that story where this lady told me that Bob, like if you just do this, instead, you'll get around that and you'll never have to bow they're gonna do it, though. Yeah, they're gonna do it. And it's just, it's fascinating sometimes. How repetitive people stories are interesting, you know, and I feel like sometimes I can see them and say, like, Oh, if you just don't do that, you'll avoid this whole thing. And I know that's real because 75 people have said this to me in my life, like while I'm interviewing them, and they don't realize they're doing it, because we sit down. It's a little bit of a things they see but we sit down and You're like, oh, it's Scott, the guy who has been talking in my ear for a couple of years. I'll tell him about my car accident where my kid flew into the cornfield, and my mom's bipolar, which are not things she would tell people normally. So we have this kind of relaxed conversation about things that people don't talk about, usually. And, anyway, I might, maybe I'm having feelings of grandeur. But I feel like I've heard enough stories and seen enough of the building blocks of stories, that you can kind of look at a person's life in motion and go, Oh, that's not a thing they should be doing. And I know, because that's going to lead to this, okay. That's why I keep asking people about their stories so that other people can listen to them and eventually go, oh, I should be taking care of myself better. Or, you know, like, maybe it would behoove me to take three days to figure out how fats impacting my meals, you know, how do you talk them into doing things for themselves that, that nobody really either knows to do or cares to spend the time on? I mean, I still every day somebody says to me, I don't have time to listen to that. And what I think is, oh, okay, well, I know exactly what's going to happen to your health. You don't know because you have that human thing where you think it's not going to happen to me, I'm going to be the one that's okay. Right, my dad and your dad did the same thing. Three packs of cigarettes, no big deal. This won't be a problem at all. You know, my dad died of congestive heart failure eventually. And your father had a heart attack and then a stroke, which is directly relatable to the, to the, to the cigarettes, you know, while they're doing it, they're not. They're like, Nah, that's fine. I'm fine. Which is what you were doing with your blood sugar. Like, I'm fine, I'm fine. Until Yeah, it's just anyway, Stacy, I see it. I feel genuinely lucky to be able to have the conversations of pulling things out of people to make them available for other people to hear. So maybe they'll have an aha moment move forward. But you know, still in my own life, it doesn't always help me. So yeah, because

Stacie 57:02
you're, when you're talking with other people, you're listening to their story and helping them and helping other people. But when it comes down to looking at yourself, that's, that's hard to do. Yeah. And who's got the time? Honestly,

Scott Benner 57:18
it's a lot of work it is. So I make a podcast that you listen to it, so that along the way you go, alright, I'll do it. That's pretty much the whole thing. It's my my lot in life, which I don't mean it that way. But it's my responsibility to find an entertaining way to tell people's stories about their diabetes. So people actually listen to it and then end up end up helping themselves. That's pure. Yeah. So anyway, alright, so how did you find out you're adopted?

Stacie 57:46
Well, surprisingly, after hearing a little bit about my parents, they never told me

they expected my after hearing stories over, you know, afterwards, they wanted my brother to tell me now. My brother was is 11 years older, a psychologist, and he's, he's been the one rock and my family loves him. Smart man. Anyway, I can't say more about my brother. But they wanted him to tell me I was adopted because he'd be able to deal with the emotional Fallout, I'm guessing. She's like, that's not my responsibility to tell her. My dad wanted me to know, but my mother absolutely did not want me to know. My guess. It was because she was probably afraid I wouldn't love her. Or it would change the relationship or who knows. So life went on. And nobody told me when I was in college, it was, Oh, I was going into my senior year and I decided I'm not going to go back home for the summer. I'm staying here. I'm going to work. I'm done with going home. And so my sister was helping my friends and I move and they were in the moving truck with her and I was in a in my own car. And she kept saying to my friends, I am so glad Stacy's doing this. She needs to get away from home. She needs to get away from the parents. And my friends were like, yeah, yeah, we know. We know. And she's like, No, you don't understand. She needs to get away. And they're like, we know. And then she's like, No, you don't understand. She's adapted. And they're like, What And then she realized she let the 21 year old secret out of the bag. And she said, You can't tell her. Please don't tell her. She's not supposed to know. So I was really close with these two friends. You know, when you're when you're best friends with people and you live with them, you know when they're acting different. Like what's wrong with you guys? Boy, you're acting weird. Nothing. Nothing's wrong. One night, we went to a party and had some drinks. And I'm like, come on you guys what's going on? We know something about you. And we can't tell you. And like, it just pissed me off. Yeah. Also, how

Scott Benner 20:00:41
do you know something about me? I don't know. That's insane.

Stacie 20:00:45
Yeah, exactly. But we promised we wouldn't tell. I remember getting pissed off and leaving. And then a couple of days later. I'm like, you guys, come on. You're acting weird. You know something about me that I'm not supposed to know. It's terrible. And they're like we we just we promised we can't tell. So well, what if I guess it? Would you tell me if I guessed it? And they looked at each other and said, I guess that wasn't part of the deal. Okay. What

Scott Benner 20:01:17
is wrong with everybody? Stacy? Can I give a piece of advice, everybody listening? Don't keep secrets. It's always worse. Just always, it's never the right thing to do. If you find yourself saying I wonder if she would tell what you should be saying is I should immediately tell this person this thing. Because I it's not my responsibility to like, hold the secret inside. They get to deal with their thing. It doesn't matter if it goes well or doesn't go well. It's their information to have not yours. Like one of my kids recently, where they knew something about a friend's thing that impacted another friend. And they were faced with this opportunity to keep a secret. And I said, Arden What'd she do? She's like I told her right away. And I was like, good for you. Like, she goes, this is my problem, but she deserves to know. And I was like, right. Everyone deserves to know their thing. But now you're playing a goddamn guessing game. Like, it's like, it's like 20 questions. Oh,

Stacie 20:02:19
there were 20 there were only two. Yeah, I said. I said, Well, my dad's sick and he's dying. And they're like, No, that's not it. I said, Okay. I'm adopted. And the look on their faces was priceless.

Scott Benner 20:02:35
Did you always think you worse they see.

Stacie 20:02:39
I always questioned it. Because I was so different than my parents. Like I was extremely athletic and active and love to be outside. I was a tomboy. Like, I played boys baseball and every sport imaginable. And these two people had not an athletic bone in their body. Yeah, I felt like I didn't look like them. But I talked myself into thinking that maybe I looked a little bit like my dad. But I just I just remember, all my years growing up looking in the mirror going. Do I look like I don't get it and then I would just kind of brush it off.

Scott Benner 20:03:25
I never wondered, like we all look similar enough that it wasn't like crazy. You don't I mean, like I wasn't like redheads and thin and they weren't like round and like had dark hair or something like that, you know, but we all look similar enough. But it's funny. I never thought about it deeply. I always knew I was adopted. They told me like right away. But I don't think about when people tell me Oh, you look like your son or your daughter has these features that I don't see that about my own kids. And I wonder if it's something to do with how I grew up? Because they obviously my my children are obviously mine. And my and my wife's like they look like us in ways Arden's faces very unique. So you can you have to pick out features, but my son looks like me. You know, he looks like me and my wife smashed together. Like he just does, but I never think about it that way. And I wonder if it's something I'm not blocking out from being adopted and growing up, to be perfectly

Stacie 20:04:23
honest. So it's funny you say that because I've thought that about my own kids too. Yeah, I mean, people will tell me my daughter and I look so much alike. And I look in the pictures and I'm like, I can see that we're similar in a lot of ways, but I don't know. Yeah,

Scott Benner 20:04:41
we just don't have that like feeling from growing up. Yeah, that we can now like sort of tacked on to for this. i It does seem. It doesn't seem crazy to me at all. So yeah, although my kids are much more athletic than I am, or my wife was and they were retiring. Seems like you've heard me joke on the podcast. I'm like, I must have an incredibly athletic mailman or something like that. But but but at the same time, I wasn't not athletic. I just was not as as they are. So both of the kids are really, so much so and it's funny Arden's gotten so far away from playing softball at this point. She doesn't do stuff like that anymore. That when she meets new people, they were like, when she was a freshman in college, they were all sitting around one night there her roommates talking about like sports, and one of the girls played soccer. And the other girl did this thing and everything and Arden's like, I played softball, and they're like, No, you didn't. And she goes, No, I did. Like I was really good. And she's like, that's not possible. And she's like, she's like, they didn't she called me. She goes, Dad, I'm like issues. I'm here with everybody. And I'm like, Hey, girls, and they're like, Hi. Can you just answer a question for me? And I was like, yeah, she's like, did I play softball? I was like, yes, she goes, was I any good at it? And I was like, oh, Arden was like a fantastic third baseman, she could pitch a little bit, she could play the outfield if she needed to crazy arm like Arden could throw a ball, throw a wall. And the girls were like, what? And so she's so changed in the last couple of years that, like they couldn't even bring themselves to think that about her.

Stacie 20:06:13
Oh, my word.

Scott Benner 20:06:17
Stacy, is there anything that we haven't talked about that we should have? I

Stacie 20:06:20
really can't think of anything, I can say that. You're never too old to learn new tricks. I did eventually go on an insulin pump. I went back to school and got my master's in social work. And during that time, I was in school, I had been ashamed of diabetes my entire life and afraid to share it with people. And while I was working on my master's, I got an epiphany that I was going to do all my research and type one diabetes. And I did all my presentations, and papers and research and type one, just wanting to educate others, and type one. And I became an advocate, and no longer ashamed and got a Dexcom. Because during my research, I met other type ones I'd never known other type ones when I was growing up, had no support system. But while I was working on my Masters, which I didn't start doing until I was 45. And learned all about the Dexcom and met other type ones, it was really another game changer for me, and started listening to your podcast a couple of years ago, I learned how to Pre-Bolus and bump and nudge and do all these little fun tricks that have just made life with diabetes a little more tolerable.

Scott Benner 20:08:02
That's great. It's fantastic. You put a lot of effort in you deserve a ton of credit. And at the same time, I think anybody could do it. You know, you just have to kind of carve out a little bit of time. And, and, and be be purposeful about it, you know, not just say I want to get better at it. But do something, take a step order a magazine, right? Like, you know,

Stacie 20:08:25
little tiny baby steps. Yeah, they don't have to be huge, just one little tiny step at a time.

Scott Benner 20:08:32
Yeah, at your own pace, I actually found myself telling somebody that last night, we put up lists, one of the most frustrating things about doing what I do is that you put this information in the world. And then you realize that three days later, it's as if it's not there, and you have to do it again and again and again, and over and over. And so we were sharing on the Facebook group, this list of lists, basically, it's all of the different collections inside of the podcast. And people came along with like, Oh, I'm so glad you made this. And all I could think was this, we've had this for two years. And then you know, like, it's okay, it's alright, here it is, again, you know, and, and one woman said, I don't think I can listen for more than about a half an hour at a time, I have a pretty short extension span, I said, that's fine, that information is always going to be there for you. You can, you know, at your own pace, just do it at your own pace. Don't feel like you have to sit down and hammer through 10 episodes to magically be better at something just listen as you can. And you'll wake up a year from now and be in a different situation. And that's hard for people to to I think to use as a goal. You know, a year from now, you know, I'm now in December. Having started using we go V for weight loss in March. And you know, on that first injection when you put it in, you're like I'm not thinner. You know, like like it's you have that feeling of like oh, when's it gonna happen? And you know, a half a pound around a week or so, you start to realize it doesn't matter. Like, as long as I'm moving in the right direction. That's really what's important. Because one day I'll look back and think, Oh, I did it. Like I'm gone. Now I moved out of that space. I'm into a different space now. You don't get to see it happen. Yeah.

Stacie 20:10:14
We live in a we live in a world of instant gratification. No, of course. Yeah,

Scott Benner 20:10:21
things happen so quickly now for you that you're just like, well, it didn't work and three days into it, you're like, ah, vitamins don't work. Like, you've only been taking them for three days. Don't feel magically better. That's not how it's gonna be. So I mean, I was taught that patience. Because you start thinking, well, there are 52 weeks in a year, I only want to lose 40 pounds. So a pound a week. Great. And that even leaves 12 weeks there, where if I don't lose weight, it doesn't even matter. Sure. You know, if you think about it that way, then suddenly, you know, it all makes sense. But when you're looking, oh, I have to lose 40 pounds. Why is it not gone already? Like, you know, you can tell people all you want, well, you didn't gain 40 pounds in a day, you're not going to lose 40 pounds in a day. And you didn't get to this situation with diabetes in a day It took years of people not giving you good tools, or you ignoring it, or whatever you ended up doing along the way to get you where you are, it's going to take some time to get out of it too. So yeah, it's all about, it's all about not wanting that gratification today. Like you have to be and by the way, here's how I do it. I keep cactuses. They grow so slowly, that a year after you have one, if it's an inch taller, you're like, Oh my God, look how much this girl that actually taught me patience, like trying to keep a cactus to grow. So you guys should find something that helps you with that. Anyway, Stacy, you were terrific. I really appreciate you doing this with me. I know how long it takes to get on the show and all that stuff. So I know it's a big effort. And it's just a couple days after Christmas. So I appreciate it very

Stacie 20:11:56
much. Well, I appreciate being able to talk to you and it was was great. And

Scott Benner 20:12:03
we can call this one dope pick all

Unknown Speaker 20:12:04
right. Oh, heck yeah. Okay,

Scott Benner 20:12:07
well then that's done. That one was easy.

Stacie 20:12:12
I was curious. I was sitting here thinking I wonder what he's gonna call this Oh,

Scott Benner 20:12:16
it's clearly dill pickle. You know, although Children of the Corn strong No, I thought maybe go children strong second, but it really it's talking about a child flying for cars. So I don't think there's a lot of joy in that all mean that she lived through it is joyful. But even that, like do you think people right now are like thrown out of a car happen all of the time? Oh, my God. Yeah. No idea. You're just so lucky to be alive now. You have no idea just anyway. Right? All right, Stacy. Hold on for me. Okay. Okay.

A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors. Ag one drink ag one.com/juice box. You can start your day the same way I do with a delicious drink of ag one. Jaylen is an incredible example of what so many experience living with diabetes, you show up for yourself and others every day, never letting diabetes define you. And that is what the Medtronic champion community is all about. Each of us is strong and together, we're even stronger. To hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community or to share your own story visit Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox And look out online for the hashtag Medtronic champion. A huge thanks to Dexcom for supporting the podcast and for sponsoring this episode dexcom.com/juicebox Go get yourself a Dexcom g7 right now using my link. If you are a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The bold beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CDC es a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years. And in the bowl beginning series Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698 In your podcast player, or you can go to juicebox podcast.com. And click on bold beginnings in the menu. If you're not already subscribed or following in your favorite audio app, please take the time now to do that. It really helps the show and get those automatic downloads set up so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrong way recording.com

#1247 Service with a Smile

Sarah is the mother of a child with type 1 diabetes. We discuss her daughter's diagnosis, her father's volunteer work with the Red Cross and his battle with cancer, highlighting family resilience.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 1247 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Okay, we're going to talk to Sarah today. She's the mother of a child with type one diabetes. We're going to talk about that but we also talk a fair amount about her father, and all the wonderful service that he put into the world. 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. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D. Drink ag one.com/juice box. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes, but everybody is welcome type one type two gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me. If you're impacted by diabetes, and you're looking for support, comfort or community check out Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes on Facebook. Kids it's summertime and what a better time to hold close to you what is dear and I'm talking about quality soft and comfortable clothing from cozy earth.com Save 30% off your entire order with the offer code juice box at checkout at cozy earth.com This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries G voc hypo penne Find out more at G voc glucagon.com forward slash juicebox. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever since CGM ever since is going to let you break away from some of the CGM norms you may be accustomed to no more weekly or bi weekly hassles of sensor changes. Never again, will you be able to accidentally bump your sensor off. You won't have to carry around CGM supplies and worrying about your adhesive lasting. Well that's the thing of the past. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox.

Sarah 2:14
Hi, my name is Sarah, and I'm from Vancouver, and up in Canada and my daughter was diagnosed when she was eight years old on January 8 2017, with type one diabetes. And that's where our journey began.

Scott Benner 2:34
How old is she now?

Sarah 2:35
15. She just turned 15 in October.

Scott Benner 2:38
Wow. All she had diabetes then.

Sarah 2:40
We are celebrating her diversity next January in. She'll be six years. It'll be your sixth diversity.

Scott Benner 2:47
You see the only type one in your family? Yeah, she sure

Sarah 2:50
is. She shares she has a grandmother on her father's side, who I think was diagnosed with actually has a Lada because she even find this shocking. She has some other thyroid issues as well. And so my gut instinct is she was initially diagnosed as a type two but my gut tells me that she's she's type one.

Scott Benner 3:12
My gut told me you were from like, I was thinking when you were talking? Yeah, your voice was telling me like Washington, Oregon. And you said Vancouver. I was like I was very close. I felt good about that. Yeah, for

Sarah 3:24
sure. West Coast. Yeah, yeah. But no, I'm a Canadian girl. Born born and raised.

Scott Benner 3:30
Okay, because your last name does not make me think Canada. No, it doesn't does it

Sarah 3:37
soaks my my dad immigrated or my dad's family immigrated from Eastern Europe during the Bolshevik Revolution that makes more sense to Canada.

Scott Benner 3:46
For sure was there wasn't a nice bridge back then they still had to get on a boat or a plane, right?

Sarah 3:51
I think so i think i think was a boat. I think they came over by boat. And they actually landed in New York City where they were rejected because they were Jewish. They came. The boat was then sent to Montreal, where they were rejected again, nobody wanted them where they were sent back to a different port in New York State somewhere. And then I think they eventually found their way like I think it was like Halifax or somewhere like that. Nobody wanted them because they were Jewish and from Eastern Europe. At that time, it was like back in the 1800s. So it was pretty. It was pretty raw back then.

Scott Benner 4:24
So go live in trees. Yeah, geez. Wow. Well, that was pretty. It was a lot. Yeah, you've grown up in the WB CW Television capital of the world. They make so many of our bad television shows in Vancouver. Oh

Sarah 4:38
1,000% Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we've got them everywhere. We've got one studio in particular that has studio space, and they're buying up land like crazy. And they just make everything here. Yeah, and our local. We live just outside of Vancouver but our local town hall. The yellow one is used in so many movies. and better super cheesy.

Scott Benner 5:01
Ya know anything you watch on television that when you share with other person you say it like this. I liked the flash. Yeah, wait, yeah, they make that in Vancouver. If you find yourself embarrassing, you're saying it out loud. It was made Vancouver. That's exactly. That's as Canadian as you get, by the way with the Sure was. That was good. Yeah. So let's say you're on the podcast today because you're the parent of a child with type one. But you guys have like, more of a kind of crazy medical story. So let's pick through it a little bit and try to find it. Okay. Yeah, you bet. Yeah. So your daughter six years ago presents How?

Sarah 5:35
Yeah, actually, we caught it really early, which was really fantastic. I guess. So she was we'd had a typical day. And she we had gone into Vancouver, we were saw family and came home and I was making dinner. And I was on my own. And she came into the, into the kitchen and was drinking a glass of water. And she fainted in the kitchen. Right in front of me. She just dropped. Yeah. So she had always kind of been a kid that got hangry. And I was like, oh, that's strange. You know, like I saw, I automatically assume maybe, maybe she's just kind of hungry. And I had a low blood sugar, but I scooped her up. And I you know, I did all the things you're not supposed to do when somebody faints, you know, you grab them, and you carry them. You know, I didn't know if she'd hit her head or anything. But she was eight and I was panicking. So I didn't do any of the first aid stuff that night. In hindsight, I probably should have done but whatever she survived. And so I took her to the couch, and I called 911. And I called my mom to come down and stay with my other daughter. And when the paramedics got to the house, they did a you know, their little glance over, did a finger poke, put it in her chart, I didn't really pay I didn't really realize what was happening at that point. And then my mom arrived, and she and I took off to the hospital. She had come back by that point, she was only out for about like, I don't know, 15 seconds maybe. And we had went off to our local hospital, where they made her you know, pee and blood drawn, do all that stuff. And we had some great bedside manner. Joking, super joking. It was awful. And the ER doc came back to us and said, yeah, we're just consulting with your local children's hospital, but we're pretty sure she has type one diabetes. And then she just turned and walked away.

Scott Benner 7:19
Like to go just

Sarah 7:22
just left me with that and then walked away. It was great. But the paramedic was hanging around in the background. And I guess with the finger poke he had done at the house. He came back and he said, he just appeared kind of out of the corner of nowhere. And he said, You know what she's gonna be okay. And there's a great, great resources out there. And there's this camp that you can send her to in the summertime for a week and she'll make lifelong friends and you'll be okay kind of thing. So

Scott Benner 7:52
do you think that that was something that paramedic had diabetes? No,

Sarah 7:57
but it was his last day on the job. So I think he had seen it a bunch of times before,

Scott Benner 8:03
I think, sorry, was he an older person? No,

Sarah 8:07
he was. Yeah, he probably was actually. Yeah, he probably was. Yeah, his blood sugar was 25. So I don't know what that is. I didn't bring my conversion chart. Sorry.

Scott Benner 8:16
Do you want me to look at juicebox podcast.com.

Sarah 8:18
I do all the time. So you should too. Okay. Well, their frequency stuff and everything. I'll just

Scott Benner 8:22
click on the link at the top that says a one cm blood glucose calculator. And then and then I'm going to choose but does that weird thing you use milli milli momos. And then I'll put it in 25. Oh, and a one C of 17.3.

Sarah 8:36
Yeah, holy hell. No, that's the No, that's a one see, sorry, her blood glucose. You gotta go to the other one. The other the other tab that you've got in that in that page?

Scott Benner 8:44
Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. millimoles of 25 is 450. It's a blood sugar of 450. But by the way, it isn't a 450 blood sugar correlates to an agency of 17.3.

Sarah 8:56
Interesting enough, though. We only had an agency of 8.5.

Scott Benner 9:01
Interesting. Okay, cool. Cool. That's terrible. But But But okay, so it hadn't been that long. She was just very high that day. I think so. Yeah. Slightly disconnected, but still very interesting. When a person passes out, they fall like a tree to the crumble.

Sarah 9:19
She kind of like her bottom part crumbled, but then her top half went heavy. Does that make sense? In a direction? Yes. Well, she kind of fell back. Okay. Ashley. Oh, gosh. She knows she was drinking so maybe it's because her head was kind of back. I don't know

Scott Benner 9:33
what your body followed that direction. Oh, she she tilted her head back. She just shut off.

Sarah 9:38
Yeah, wow. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. Very weird. An eight year old doing that. And right in front of you. And it was like, Oh my god. It was. It was crazy. So other kids. Yeah, I got one and she's totally fine. We put her through trial net. And she's fine.

Scott Benner 9:53
She's older or younger than your type on

Sarah 9:55
younger, two years younger. Yeah.

Scott Benner 9:58
I always feel like so Sometimes, like, once you've seen it, you know, if you're older if it was an older one is sometimes you just like, oh, they'll be fine. But when it's your first one, I don't know how you don't think, oh my god, that kid died. Like, yeah, yeah, right, it must have just your heart must have just jumped right up

Sarah 10:14
in your throat. Well, you know, you get that feeling where you're like, This isn't good. This something's wrong, right? Like, yeah, for the most part, it takes a lot to to rattle me that way. Like, you fall down, you bang your knee, whatever, it's fine. You do that kind of stuff. But when they pass out right in front of you, you're like, oh, shoot, that's not normal.

Scott Benner 10:33
You yelled right to your husband, like lash up the dogs. We gotta go. That kind of thing. No, he wasn't. He wasn't there. Turn on the engine block heater. We gotta go. We gotta go. It's

Sarah 10:43
time to go. No, he was out of town. And he was out of town at the time. And so I was on my own because all things happen. When you're on your

Scott Benner 10:50
own handy, I assume. Let me tell you what, I assume you plan that? You probably

Sarah 10:56
did right. Now it's not together anymore. I don't know. Oh, wait,

Scott Benner 11:01
are you not together? Not anymore. Son of a bitch. Let me tell you a story. Okay, this is the quickest one but you're gonna love this. And if my friend ever hears this, I mean this with love. Okay. A friend of mines. Wife. How do I want to say this? Alright, I'm friends with both of them. He cuts off the tip of his finger at work. Oh, ouch. They sew it back on. It's saved. I don't want you. That's not the story. The story is that it happened about a week before Christmas. And his wife also a friend of mine said to me one time in a tone that I took as being serious. I know he got hurt, so we wouldn't have to help with Christmas. But I don't think she was joking.

Sarah 11:46
Oh my gosh. Like I know

Scott Benner 11:50
she you know what I mean? Like I knew she I know. She didn't think that he went to work one day. And when if I just hack off the tip of my finger right now. I won't have to put up those Christmas lights. I know. She doesn't think that happened. But she had been married long enough and been through enough in her life that she was like he probably did this on purpose. And she wasn't 100% joking. But it's really fun. Anyway, that's what it's like to be married everybody. So good luck, mate. Go Go do it now. Yeah, enjoy the wedding Taylor pictures. You know,

Sarah 12:17
as a side note, it's quite incredible that like the most important decision you make, most of us do it in our 20s Like, what the heck is that about? Like, what

Scott Benner 12:27
were we thinking? He seems okay.

Sarah 12:31
I'll commit my life to Him in my 20s

Scott Benner 12:33
We like let's say movies. Oh, great. That'll help.

Sarah 12:38
Right? Exactly. He doesn't handle stress. Well, neither do I perfect. Yeah, we can both melt down together. Yeah,

Scott Benner 12:44
yeah, we're gonna be a force to be reckoned with while we're crying in the corner when something needs to be done. I take Listen, my wife and I are very different. And I think it's one of the reasons we're still together.

Sarah 12:55
That's great. You need to have her on the podcast. When's that gonna happen? Probably next year. Oh fantastic. I think everyone would love to hear it. Let

Scott Benner 13:03
me say this. Sarah people don't know you and I talked for 20 minutes before we started recording this you are like a super fan of the podcast. If you take insulin or sulfonylureas you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most. Be ready with G voc hypo pen. My daughter carries G voc hypo pen everywhere she goes because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar and people with diabetes ages two and above that I trust. Low blood sugar emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, G vo Capo pen can be administered in two simple steps even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store G vo Capo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use G vo Capo pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why G voc hypo pen is in Ardens diabetes toolkit at G voc glucagon.com/juicebox. G voc shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys called a pheochromocytoma. Or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulinoma. Visit G voc glucagon.com/risk For safety information. And so and so I've now told you a bunch of things no one else knows you could probably get me arrested if you wanted to. And I'm going to tell you one thing while you're being recorded. Sure. My plan for my wife is to have her on first talk about what it was like to have long COVID Oh, interesting. Yeah, because she has it has had it and but I want her to get through it as completely as possible for her to be able to tell a complete story. Fair enough. Then after she's been introduced to everybody. I think the next time she comes on, I want to talk about artists diagnosis day from both of our perspectives because I guarantee you we Both remember a lot of it differently. Oh, 1,000% Yeah, so I wouldn't I wouldn't do that with her first. She's lovely, obviously. I'm sure. But you know, not funny like me. So yeah, I was

Sarah 15:11
gonna ask, Is she more like introverted? Because you're definitely more extroverted? Yeah,

Scott Benner 15:15
she for sure is. Yeah, yeah. million percent for sure. So like, I don't even know, like, she'll be super serious, but then she'll lighten up. I can pretty much see how it's gonna go. And then she's gonna say, really? stuff about me and I, it's okay, I've said it about myself before but like, I don't mean like being shady about me. Like, she's going to tell you stuff that like you're going to be like, Oh, he's like a real person. And I would guess I am. So yeah, looking forward to

Sarah 15:40
that. Anyway, and he leaves the toilet seat up every time he leaves the bathroom.

Scott Benner 15:44
I'm a good toilet seat guy. Great. Yeah. And I don't I don't do that. I actually like, here's one of the things I'm gonna say. I'm a great guy. Yeah, you can tell it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Listen, like if I said to you, Sarah, who do you think is help people with type one diabetes? The most of anybody you've ever met? Is it me? Yeah, you would think that would buy me some latitude with my wife? Don't you know, doesn't matter. This goes back to what I said before. I said a long time ago, somewhere right now. There's the kid of Tom Brady. And Tom Brady is handing him his cereal. And that kid doesn't think oh my god, one of the best quarterbacks ever just gave me my breakfast. He thinks, Yo, man, there's too much milk in this, you're gonna do it. Look what you just did. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like I mean, this, this, is this gonna sound sad. It doesn't know. You can't? Oh, god, there's no good way to say this. I don't think you can be a perfect enough person in a marriage, for the spouse to really fully recognize that about you. Because you're always going to be seeing the things that are wrong. Yeah, of course. And you're so comfortable with that person that you're willing to like, you know, say the terrible stuff to them. You can't say to somebody else, or when you're feeling bad, you can take it out on them or like that whole thing happens. It's very common in our relationship. But you know, I don't know I just think somewhere like somebody want to like a, I don't know a Medal of Freedom or a piece of metal. What is that piece metal called? The What the hell's are called?

Sarah 17:21
Yeah, isn't it the blue heart or Purple Heart? Or you got that way? Wrong? That's not what I'm thinking of at all. It doesn't I'm also not American. So I don't know what you're talking. Oh, that's

Scott Benner 17:27
right. You're from Canada? Yeah. Yeah. Well, whatever. Like, whatever the the Canadian excellence is? Sure. You know, what are they? Oh, my God, they give it away the Nobel Peace Prize. You don't know what they know about? How did I know? I don't

Sarah 17:39
know. I thought you're referring to some American military thing. You gotta say International, then I can help you. Sorry. I was sorry. My

Scott Benner 17:45
Okay. Long way to say I think that somebody won the Nobel Peace Prize this year and got home and someone else looked at them and said, I can't believe you didn't do these dishes. You're a piece of my mom was right. I guess he

Sarah 18:02
Oh, that's true, though. It's true. And you know what it act that is in a sideways a bit of a tie in for, like, part of the diagnosis story is my dad did a ton of volunteer work international disaster relief work with the Red Cross. Wow. And he still came home. And he was he was, you know, my mum. And he just carried on as normal. And he came home and he was like, would go on the speaking tours, talking about all of the International disaster stuff he was doing or did or who he saw and what he did, and all that kind of stuff. And my mom was like, you know, could you just clean up the kitchen? Like it's not my job your home now?

Scott Benner 18:40
Margaret, I'm saving the world. Your balls are two inches longer than they were when I met you. Oh, wait, why? How'd that happen? I saved people I did I swear to God, I just did it at work just now.

Sarah 18:53
I just did it. Exactly.

Scott Benner 18:56
I know, please, I'm sure my wife feels the exact same way. And she's right, by the way. Like, I definitely got upset about something last night where I was like, Why did I even care about that? Girl has been with me since she was 20 years old. And I was like, just take? Yeah. She's like, don't say that to me. And I was like, Don't you yell at me? God, anyway, then this morning, you're just like, it's fine. Doesn't matter. That's the key, by the way, is you can come back around the other side of it. You didn't hang out long enough Sarah to find out. Maybe that wasn't your decision. Maybe it was I'm not sure. But eventually, you come back around the other side of it. And I don't like that popular media makes that look like giving up? Because I don't think I don't think that's true. No, like when you get to the part when you're in your 40s and your 50s and you're just like, yeah, that's my wife. She does. That's my husband. That's how he is like, it's all good. We love each other. We built this whole family together. This has all been terrific. I can't wait. I'm gonna live this thing out right? popular media makes it feel like you've given up because you're not trying to be super freakin happy all day long. And I don't know how to explain to any of you. That isn't Another reality that exists.

Sarah 20:00
No, it's not like yeah, you're not happy all the time anyways, you're

Scott Benner 20:04
not going to be happy all the time. I don't know how we got down this road. I'm sorry for that. Let's get back off of it again. Kids diagnosed Canada. So I should ask you regular an MPH or did they actually do? Yeah. Okay. Yeah,

Sarah 20:16
you knew. So yeah, we did the regular and mph and then she had lever mirror at night actually, if I remember correctly if you're on lever mirror at night, so we had three pins floating around at the time and then she she got him, you know, came home with a meter. I think I caught her on the Dexcom. So she was diagnosed in January. I think I got her on the Dexcom in August was a G five. G five. Okay. That was that was good. That was huge. You're

Scott Benner 20:41
married at this point? Yeah. Okay. This is the diagnosis. I'm sorry to say this Allah. Does the diagnosis have anything to do with the dissolution of your marriage?

Sarah 20:49
Oh, great question. So no, we were already falling apart. It was already falling apart. So my dad, my dad was diagnosed in 2009 with prostate cancer. And then in 2013, with multiple myeloma. He was a first responder. He worked for the Red Cross as a volunteer and his retirement. And he went down after the September 11 attacks. Oh my gosh, yeah. He was working for the Red Cross the International Red Cross the American Red Cross, at Ground Zero ground

Scott Benner 21:18
zero and that, and he got cancer after that. Yeah, like so many so many people did. Yeah,

Sarah 21:24
exactly. Yeah, he had three different posts when he was there he was, he was really, really, really good with people like you. And like and and, and sourcing out people. So he was put in charge of local disaster volunteers. So he would kind of organize people to do certain jobs. So one of the things was I can't remember the exact context of it. But there was a ceremony for some of the victims where they had to where they were presented with military flags, but they were all folded properly, and then presented, okay. And he had to organize the folding of the flags. But there was like,

Scott Benner 21:59
this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the only six month were implantable CGM on the market. And it's very unique. So you go into an office, it's I've actually seen an insertion done online like a live one like, well, they recorded the entire videos less than eight minutes long. And they're talking most of the time, the insertion took no time at all right? So you go into the office, they insert the sensor, now it's in there and working for six months, you go back six months later, they pop out that one, put it in another one, so two office visits a year to get really accurate and consistent CGM data that's neither here nor there for what I'm trying to say. So this thing's under your skin, right. And you then wear a transmitter overtop of it. Transmitters got this nice, gentle silicone adhesive that you change daily, so very little chance of having skin irritations. That's a plus. So you put the transmitter on it talks to your phone app tells you your blood sugar, your your alert, show arms, etc. But if you want to be discreet, for some reason, you take the transmitter off, just slip comes right off. No, like, you know, not like peeling at or having to rub off at he's just kind of pops right off the silicone stuff really cool. You'll say it. And now you're ready for your big day. Whatever that day is, it could be a prom, or a wedding or just a moment when you don't want something hanging on your arm. The ever sent CGM allows you to do that without wasting a sensor because you just take the transmitter off. And then when you're ready to use it again, you pop it back on, maybe you just want to take a shower without rocking a sensor with a bar of soap. Just remove the transmitter and put it back on when you're ready. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox, you really should check it out.

Sarah 23:44
I want to say like 4000 flags that had to be folded. So he had to find the space, he had to find the people. And he had to make sure that they were all fed and watered. And then all of these flags were folded in the appropriate manner in military style. And done in in timeline. And so he was in charge of putting all that together at one point. And then he was also worked in supporting the food allocation for the workers and the volunteers are at different spots. So he was out at the kill site. It was Staten Island, where they took all the debris

Scott Benner 24:16
making. I don't remember it's so low now. Yeah.

Sarah 24:19
So he was in and out of there making sure people were fed properly. But so he was up and down that that region a second and all those fumes of all the debris that was going to be placed over there or wherever it was placed. And then he was also down at the main respite center at ground 02.

Scott Benner 24:37
So did it did the cancer take his life or is he with us?

Sarah 24:41
No, he's not with us anymore. So yeah, eventually he had sort of three rounds of multiple myeloma, if you will, it kind of went away for a bit and then it came back and then it went away. And then he kind of tapped out with how much the type of treatment that they could give him and he did some sort of an experimental treatment the last round and his numbers were As a cancer numbers were actually quite good. But the prostate cancer that he had had the treatment, the radiation ended up like annihilating his bladder cell wall, the primary tissue in the bladder cell wall, which can happen over years in some cases, or many years later, I should say. And so he he was in hospital when he passed getting treatment for that, because he kept bleeding in his blood. It was It was horrific. It was just a horrific, horrific death. For him actually very painful. Sorry. I'm

Scott Benner 25:29
so sorry. Yeah, that's okay. And no, no good deed goes unpunished, huh?

Sarah 25:34
Well, there's that. That was sorry, that was a real downer.

Scott Benner 25:38
Well, listen, I'll tell you my, my enduring memories from 911 are kind of twofold. One, my wife worked in Jersey City, right on the water when it was happening. And I'm sure people have stories like this all over the place. But she had a meeting in Manhattan that day. So she was taking the train up from New York. And she just sort of made this last minute decision. Like, I'm not going to this meeting. I'm just going to, I'm going to I'm not getting off at world trade. I'm gonna get off sooner. And I'm in New in New Jersey, and just go to my office and work from there. Or she would have gotten like, right into the city look at like, I'm not just telling you as it's happening. Like, I'm telling you, my wife watched buildings get hit and fall from her office window. Yeah, yeah. So like she would have been in the city. Right. As it was happening, then. It's before? Like, I mean, people had cell phones back then. But But I don't know for for you kids. We didn't used to keep our cell phones on, because it would kill the batteries. Right? Yeah, you would, you would only turn them on to make a phone call. Because I know again, hard to believe all your phone did was make a phone call. Yeah.

Sarah 26:43
Or you could text by like pressing the buttons like a lot. Do you remember that? Yeah.

Scott Benner 26:47
Nobody did that. Yeah, no. Only a mental patient would do that. That was a lot of like, I don't know if that's a pejorative term anymore. But anyway, it probably is. But I don't I can't be perfect. Okay,

Sarah 26:58
you can handle the emails over that or not me. I

Scott Benner 27:01
can't believe you said mental and to calm down, listen to the other story. So not only would we not have our phones on, we wouldn't plug them in constantly, like you all do now. Like so you'd plug your phone in, like once a week. And it wasn't a big part of your life. It was a thing that like sat at the bottom of your purse, or like in the little thing in your car in the middle like you didn't carry it with you. So my wife's phone was all but dead. And the and the system was failing everywhere. The cell system in New York was failing constantly. So I was able to get through to her enough to hear that she had been pushed out of her building by the cops. And they literally just told them to walk away from the water. So they were in Jersey City, and they just said walk that way. And so her building ended up being used as the main morgue, actually, because of its proximity to the towers. They were barging bodies over, and then laying them out in this atrium. So that doctors could help give, you know, make sure people were passed, and then tagging them and doing stuff like that. Actually, a doctor my wife worked with stayed in that building for days doing that. Yeah. But my but my wife, and a friend of hers just walked. And they at one point she turned her phone on and called me. And she's like, I'm okay. We're walking, trying to find her car, like the girl she was with. And I was the father of a baby. So Cole was a baby a baby I call my father in law. I met my father in law along the highway, I moved colts car seat into his truck. He took coal back into Pennsylvania. And I drove north to find Kelly. Oh my god, it took us crazy all day. I think I got her home around seven o'clock that night. And we ended up meeting up like literally on a highway where basically we were like making calls yelling about mile markers and eventually just saw the driver wave out the window. And I came to an abrupt stop found a place to cross the highway and go back again. And then I went and picked her up on the side of the road her friend for doing that for her didn't get home until like two o'clock in the morning. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And you could see the fire burning from my house when I got on the highway in in Central Jersey was insane. Wow, that's my day of memory. My in the aftermath memory is that the train station near my house had abandoned cars in it. Wow. So you could go there in the evenings after everybody was home from work. And you could see all the people who passed away who and their cars had just been left at the train station. Yeah, that's haunting isn't it as it was really terrible. But your father was out there trying to help all the way from Vancouver?

Sarah 29:49
Uh huh. So yeah, so when he retired he was he was really all about you know, doing good and leaving his mark you know on on in the world the best at he Could you just not not in an egotistical way, but in a giving back kind of a way he was he always had a fascination with disasters in international aid work, I guess. But he was kind of creeping on an agent. So he he kind of did what he wanted what he could do locally where he was involved with emergency social social services locally. And he did some training courses in which were kind of offered free for people that wanted to get involved with, you know, your house burns down, let's say, for example, so he would show up as a representative of the local social services network, and he would help you get a hotel, make sure you had your medications and foods and food vouchers and stuff like that, and help you get settled for the night. And that was something that he did in his retirement. And then he really enjoyed that. So he got involved on a bigger scale with Canadian Red Cross. And then he went, and he did a lot of the disaster training work within Canada that he could do. And then when the disaster happened down in the States, they offered him the opportunity to go down and help down there. And he did so. And he also ended up going down to Mobile, Alabama, during Hurricane Katrina. He was asked this, I guess there was some of the same people were involved with the American Red Cross that he had kept in touch with and they said, Hey, you, you, can you come down, you want to come down? Well, we'll get things in motion for if you want to come down. And so he didn't, he went down there too. And interestingly enough, some of the there was a group of I want to say it was this was I'm just going from storytelling. So if the if the details aren't quite 100% Sure, forgive me. But his he was telling. He was telling us that there I think it was a group of Baptists that came from somewhere, I don't know where they would roll up in a giant with a giant, basically food truck. And this was part of their service, their churches service, and they would service the community with food, no questions asked kind of thing. And he found that same group of Baptist in New York, and then he found them again in Mobile, Alabama, when he was down there. They just like, yeah, so it was kind of a kind of a cool thing. Yeah. That's just did.

Scott Benner 32:00
Did he ever expressed any regret as he was passing?

Sarah 32:03
He had a lot. He had quite a bit of trauma. I think not. I think he had trauma. So he had PTSD, for sure. From I think some of the disaster work that he did, and Life wasn't easy to him, either. Growing up he had his, you know, his, his childhood, being told he wasn't smart, wasn't bright, like kinda like you've alluded to on the on the podcast, similar story, but he was like, I never felt stupid. And I just saw things a different way. And you would talk to him now, before he got sick, and he was brilliant. You know, he was just a really bright, really well read man just never went to college and just saw things from a different angle. Yeah, I don't think he had ret, per se. But his key? I don't know. That's a bit of a tough question. I think I got lost my train of thought.

Scott Benner 32:52
I'm just wondering as cancer is taking your life, do you think oh, I probably could have just not gone to that 911 thing?

Sarah 32:59
I don't think so. Okay, he kind of live with no regrets. You know, you you. You pick a path and you rock and roll was kind of the way he did? What kind of? Yeah, sounds crazy. But it was an IT WAS AN AWFUL exit though, because he had delirium. So he was hallucinating quite a bit. And it was really, really aggressive. really aggressive. So he had to be strapped down to the bed and stuff like that,

Scott Benner 33:22
like a good hallucination. Like using a strip club. And he was 25 or something like that. Yeah,

Sarah 33:26
no, no, like when he was in California in the 60s. And

Scott Benner 33:30
those Canadian strip clubs we've heard about on past podcasts. Right. There you go. Yeah. Remember the one Yukon something that girl was opposed to a can can dancer something like that? Yes. Right. Remember, I joked with her, do they? Did they tip you with their chips? And she's like they did? Oh, God. I was just joking. Jesus. It's a real thing. That actually happened. I'm so sorry. Yeah.

Sarah 33:53
My dad was literally in California in Santa Barbara in the 60s, though. So yeah,

Scott Benner 33:56
he was using like, what do you think? Like? Acid? Yeah,

Sarah 34:02
for sure. He actually so he went to Santa. He went he was down doing call it college down there. Taught photography, or he was taking photography. And part of his part time job was he would get paid to. To make sure people didn't kill themselves when they were on acid trips. Oh, yeah.

Scott Benner 34:17
What a lovely part time job. Oh, you're helping people forever. Yeah, yeah. Forever. Yeah. So let's just do an acid trip. And your father would make sure you were okay. Yeah, exactly. like Uber. You have to call for that. How does that happen? I

Sarah 34:30
don't know. I have no, no clue. Was California in the 60s? I don't know

Scott Benner 34:34
your dad. Your dad told you that. Sir. You're like, oh my god, you shouldn't be in charge of me even.

Sarah 34:41
Or you should because you got way more life skill than I'll ever have one of the two. You

Scott Benner 34:45
got all those people through there? Either. They're weird. I mean, imagine how like, unstable those drugs were 50 years ago.

Sarah 34:52
Oh my gosh. Well, you know what? Yes and no, I don't know. Because I think that it was just so pure that nobody was messing around with

Speaker 1 34:59
it. Beto, yeah, no, no, no, no. Who knows?

Sarah 35:03
He lived a wild and crazy life, that's

Scott Benner 35:05
for sure. Your mom's just like, what church lady or something like that, or did they match up?

Sarah 35:09
Not at all? No, not at all. No, no, my mom was really involved with them. She was a physiotherapist. And then she was really involved with writing for the disabled. And she eventually went on to work with the Canadian para equestrian team at Olympic games and things like that. And she was involved also, too. And so you know, when you see all these, like Paralympic athletes, and they're all competing against each other, you're like, well, that person has one arm. But that person has two legs and like, should they be competing against each other? Like, how does that work? There's a classification system in most of the sports that's put into place that will assess the athletes to determine, you know, should they be in class, one a or one B. So she was involved with the writing part of it, and assessing athletes from North America to make sure that they were in the right categories and competing against each other.

Scott Benner 35:58
I hope that everybody who's been listening takes the time to go back over in their head. Oh, I never thought how many people and what kind of effort and space it would take to fold flags. Right? Because try to imagine all the other things that are going on in the world. Yep. And that little thing, took a man who was dedicated and experienced, who had to pull together a team to accomplish that thing that on television, you didn't think twice about? No, no. Yeah. Somebody just reached out with two hands and handed someone to fly in his in a city.

Sarah 36:33
That was that he didn't know. Well, that's not true. He spent a lot of time in New York, but he didn't have community there. I mean,

Scott Benner 36:40
in a city where everybody who, who could ran the hell out of it, because it was crazy. Like living living here even even an hour away. Was it's different. Like my brother lives in Wisconsin, and he said, I have to be honest, he's like, it doesn't feel the same here as it does there. Like like, you know, in the beginning, he was like, it just feels like something happened. I don't know if people remember to that like the week before. 911. Like a paraglider crashed into the Statue of Liberty. And it was it was nothing about terrorism. It was just like some jackass just was out doing something and they hit the goddamn Statue of Liberty. Right? Like, so. When it first happened, my first thought was, oh, my god, is this happening again? Like some jackass is like, you know, like, that was my first thought about it. But anyway, I don't know where everybody was in that moment. I know exactly what I was doing when it happened. Like when I when I when I found out about it. And I don't think I've ever said but I think I was listening to Howard Stern interview. Pamela Anderson. Sounds good. All right. I think that's what was happening. And my son Cole, Cole, and Cole had just finished his breakfast. He was playing on the floor. There

Sarah 37:51
you go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Benner 37:55
Why did you come on this podcast?

Sarah 37:57
Yeah, I don't know, just to just to kind of chat and share like, some some crazy times of life that happened leading up to the diagnosis, I had dad in and out of cancer treatment and, and then partway through my dad's last cancer treatments, my mom got diagnosed with cancer as well, right in the middle of it. So I two of them had chemotherapy at the same time. And then my marriage was falling apart. And that wasn't good times, either. And then your kid gets diagnosed with type one diabetes. And it's just I think, for me to share that. You know, and you and I talked about it at the beginning, there's the ups and the downs. And not every moment is going to be happy and perfect. But if you can ride the wave of life, things, find some silver linings on there. that's for darn sure. Yeah, some silver linings. You know, there's, I don't know, I just thought I'd come on and have a chat and see where the conversation went more so than anything,

Scott Benner 38:59
you just like the podcast, so you want to be able to? That's cool. That's fine. You're doing a great job doing a great job. God, if you want to say something nice about me, you can I won't stop you.

Sarah 39:06
Do you know what I think you've done is I think you've created a space where people can go in there feeling like they need to reach out reach them to feel their community. So like when you listen to the stories you listen to Eric, you listen to Jenny, listen to you. You feel you're like, Oh, they're my people. There they are. Even if you don't know them, you're never gonna meet all these people. You're like, okay, there's someone who, who gets it, who knows what it's like to have, have it, live it. And you just feel like you're part of a community a little bit more than, you know, going through trying to explain it to people who really don't understand what the hell you're talking about.

Scott Benner 39:34
Is it attractive to you that you're going to be part of that now or did you not consider that?

Sarah 39:38
I didn't really consider it because I I kind of you know, mess around online I mess around. That's the wrong thing. But like participate I should say in that Facebook group a little bit where I feel I can help here and there. So I'll step in and I'll sort of say stuff if I'm like me,

Scott Benner 39:50
says like, I mess around. I do not have an ollie fans. That's I know. Oh, God, no. Don't we all wish our feet were nice enough. You don't I mean, like how we do please make good money, sir. Oh

Sarah 40:03
my goodness, I tell you my truck no one wants my feet. My feet are stasis. That's not good. That's not good. No,

Scott Benner 40:10
I have a scar on my now do you think people would find that attractive?

Sarah 40:14
Well, I don't think so I don't I feel like they're super functional. I'm not sure.

Scott Benner 40:18
I'm just telling you. I work really hard at this. And it might be nice to just like take like action shot of my foot and put it online and make money.

Sarah 40:27
Maybe you should just do it just to see what happens. Maybe there's some juice boxers out there who who'd be interested? I don't know. Hey, you just never know.

Scott Benner 40:33
I don't. I'm not denigrating anybody. If you want pictures of my feet there for sale, just send an email to the podcast. I'd be happy to send them free. We'll work out a price.

Sarah 40:39
Yeah, you don't need to have even another platform. So

Scott Benner 40:42
no, I'm not even gonna I'm not even like No, don't worry about it at all. I'm happy to just yeah, all this work. I'm putting in this podcast. Don't worry about it. I'll just I'll just USD my ankles there. No. You nailed it. There can't be a person on the planet who would find my feet or ankles attractive? No. And by the way, if there are please again, just send an email and we'll work it out. Would you like to send me you might use socks, but I do that, Sarah? Let's think about it. Yeah, you would send her enough money. Probably. Thank you. Imagine if this podcast falls apart, Sara because I am such a bustling stinky sock business going that I can't keep up with the podcast though.

Sarah 41:20
You know what if that's what makes you happy? That's awesome.

Unknown Speaker 41:24
I don't think it would make you happy.

Sarah 41:25
I think it makes you feel a little creeped out.

Scott Benner 41:27
I would why would you stick them in the envelope, yelling at myself and then stick them into the mailbox? Probably.

Sarah 41:33
But don't send them before you get paid? Because that's

Scott Benner 41:36
a look at you with good business advice. Thank you so much. I appreciate deposit

Sarah 41:39
maybe a deposit just to get the shipping together pay ahead

Scott Benner 41:42
of time. That's fine, because I can always make more stinky socks if they don't arise, don't you? Absolutely.

Sarah 41:47
Absolutely.

Scott Benner 41:48
What's the weirdest smell you've ever gotten from your socks?

Sarah 41:51
Oh, just you know the sweaty?

Scott Benner 41:52
You know the sweaty socks didn't remind you of something though.

Sarah 41:55
Probably a hotkey change room.

Scott Benner 41:57
I once thought my socks smelled like sour cream and onion. Potato chips.

Sarah 42:01
Did you eat sour cream and onion? Potato chips? No,

Scott Benner 42:03
I don't even like sour cream and onion. Potato chips. I know. I found that upsetting to it was years ago, but they definitely smelled like that. And then I tried to make Kelly smile. She wouldn't do that. No, no, she would not.

Sarah 42:17
That's good. There's only a certain amount of time that that you can expect someone to do that for I think marriage. Yeah,

Scott Benner 42:25
I think that's maybe something you get away with in the first eight months of dating. Yeah, but certainly not after 20 some years. Nobody's doing

Sarah 42:32
she she just tells you to pounce. And I'm sure

Scott Benner 42:34
she'd like you could leave or get away from me with a sock. So I was like, Okay,

Sarah 42:38
I need to move along. Well, yeah. Yeah. But we can we can. We can talk about your lovely sponsors if you want to, because I think they should get some props right now.

Scott Benner 42:47
Go ahead.

Sarah 42:48
I'm an ag one convert. Oh, I've

Scott Benner 42:50
started because you drink ag one.com/juicebox? You bet.

Sarah 42:54
I've been on it. I've been having it for about a year, almost a year, when did you start advertising with them? Or would they started with you?

Scott Benner 43:00
It's gotta be, I gotta be the end of my second. Am I at the end of my first year? My second year was I was using it before that, right. And then I don't know if this is a year. So I don't know if I've been using it for two years. And they've been with me for a year if I've been doing it for two years, but they did sign back up for next year.

Sarah 43:17
Fantastic. Yeah. It's a great product. It's it's yeah, it's a great product. And you know, like I'm an elementary school teacher and I don't get sick. No. And I feel like I put it through the real

Scott Benner 43:28
test is kids are Canadian too. So they're extra dirty. Yeah. Yeah. Because they gotta

Sarah 43:32
live outside. Yep, that's true. That's true.

Scott Benner 43:35
Do they have shoes? Or shoes? The kids have shoes,

Sarah 43:37
right? Yes. No moccasins. Um, you know what? In Vancouver here, we're pretty similar to the climate of sight of Seattle. But we got beautiful mountains. It's gorgeous.

Scott Benner 43:48
I mean, I'd come by so far away. I know.

Sarah 43:51
Hey, you guys have a direct flight New Jersey to Vancouver?

Scott Benner 43:54
Oh, that sounds like six hours.

Sarah 43:57
Probably 555 ish.

Scott Benner 43:59
If I stayed long enough, I wouldn't mind. But like, sometimes people are like, You should come out to Montana and give a talk. And I'm like, I'll be there for two hours. And I gotta fly to Montana and then fly back again. And like I can I stay for a week? Like then I would do it in any means. But

Sarah 44:12
yeah. Roll it into a family vacation. If you if you were to get asked or decided to come out here. It's pretty spectacular. Yeah, it's pretty spectacular spot from all over the world to come here.

Scott Benner 44:22
I just want you to try to imagine if I went to Vancouver before Toronto, if Isabelle in the Facebook group wouldn't just murder me.

Sarah 44:30
That's true. Yeah, that's true. But see, the thing is, is that Isabelle lives in the like the New York equivalent of Vancouver, right? In New York. Yeah. The New York event equivalent of Canada, I should say sorry. I misspoke. Like Toronto. Everybody feels like it's like the best place in the world. Right in Canada. They're wrong. It's Vancouver.

Scott Benner 44:49
Here, here's what I know about Vancouver. Bad television. Pawel boy. That's what I

Sarah 44:53
have. Pebble bruh. Yes.

Scott Benner 44:55
Yeah, that's all about Vancouver. Hey, we

Sarah 44:57
hosted an Olympic Games in 2010. You Yeah, I saw

Scott Benner 45:00
on television. I could have been anywhere. I don't know you could have been lying to me. It's true. Yeah, sure. We were we were it's all a conspiracy. I'm still not sure about the moon landing. Yeah, no, you don't let me just go out and say this real quickly. I am very sure about the moon landing. No, I don't want to.

Sarah 45:13
I think it happened. 100% to happen. Yeah.

Scott Benner 45:17
Sorry. I believe that the moon landing happened. Trying to be stupid. Yeah. How many listeners did I just lose? Were like, Oh, this guy thinks the moon landing happened. Done. Click.

Sarah 45:29
That's it. I'm out. Yeah, no, it didn't happen. Yeah, like no, with the

Scott Benner 45:32
globe is round and the moon landing happened. There's no Sasquatch. And that's pretty much where I'm gonna stop. Yeah, I could be wrong. I mean, I don't think I'm wrong about the globe being round, or somewhat round, at least globey.

Sarah 45:47
It's round. You see it from the from spaces round. It has to be round. I

Scott Benner 45:51
swear to God, a sports figure that I really enjoy watching play. I clicked on something the other day. And I heard him say, Listen, if you watch a rocket go up in the angle it goes on. I was like, Oh my God, he's a flat earther. And I was like, I'm like, I shut it off. I'm like, I want to be able to watch the sporting event without thinking about that. Like, so I didn't even let him finish. I pretended that's not what he was gonna say. I was like, okay,

Sarah 46:14
so I think that was a good choice. You don't want to tarnish his? You don't want your image of him tarnished. I just don't need that.

Scott Benner 46:20
Just want to cheer for him. That's all I don't want. I don't want to please. She's How does your daughter handle diabetes? Like I'm obviously now she's not using regular and mph anymore. So what's the management? Like? How much of it is you? How much of it is her? How much of it is a mixture? Does her dad get involved? That kind of stuff.

Sarah 46:42
Okay, so where are we we are looping on Omni pod Dash. And we finally got the g7 up here. So that's really nice. And so she's been on she's on her third g7 sensor as well, which is great. And we've been looping for two years in February coming up. So it's where are we? No. No December now. So it will be two years in a couple months. And that has been a complete game changer. Thank God for loop and the people involved with loop. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And so we started doing that, and then getting the settings dialed in was a real pain in the ass. I'll tell you that much. As you know, it took me a long time. And I found because she didn't really have a cycle. And she didn't really have it was just hard. And she's really active at some points at school and some parts during the day. And then after school and then other days. She's like flopped out on on the weekends. And so getting the settings dialed in has been really was really difficult for me, because she is like zero interested in testing her settings. Like there's 00 participation medals there. So it took a lot of fiddling for me on the back end. And she's doing pretty well. We got about 80 85% in range, I would say. So that's between 40 and 180. I think it is okay, I'm 70. So, we her last day when she was six,

Scott Benner 48:00
what did you hear about loop.

Sarah 48:03
So actually, I ran into somebody I met through JDRF, who I was on, I sat on the walk committee, the local walk committee, and she and I were chatting and she's just she was super smart and seems super with it and chatted with her. And she was like, You got to try a loop. And I was like What's loop so she sent me all the docs and all this stuff. And I got on the Facebook page and lurked around in the background for a while nice. And then we were that were on dash at that point. She was just I was just in hindsight now you know, with loop you just learned so much more about how how to really work with insulin and how to really you can just see it in real time, right, what's happening. So I think if I was we go back to dash if ever we had to for whatever reason, it makes like I would be able to handle it. And teacher and educator a lot more efficiently. You know, we get stuff dialed in pretty fast. But you know, the reason what, what kind of pushed me over the edge to get into looping itself was she she got migraines, and I didn't actually realize they were migraines, because, you know, I don't really get anything like I'm pretty, pretty healthy. And she was getting these like weird things where all of a sudden, she would just like, have to fall asleep. She'd call me from school and I'd have to go get her and she wouldn't make it home the four minute drive it would take us to get there. She fell asleep in the car. I was like what the hell is going on with you now she would just pass out? Well, she ended up having a severe low blood sugar. And I couldn't get her to wake up from it wasn't because the blood sugar was that low. She was just passed out from this one I now know is a migraine. And she wouldn't take juice. And I was like, Oh my God, and I had to use glucagon on her. Yeah. And I was like, Okay, well, I'm practically killing her this way. So let's try a loop and maybe we'll try and kill her the other way. And loop was magic. You know, once I got it set up and dialed in and sorted out. I mean, just the nights alone was like, oh my god, I'm sleeping again. This is heaven. Yeah. So

Scott Benner 49:51
I almost don't care what algorithm it is. Like, if you can do it, like find a way to it because oh my god, it's just I mean, art is using Iaps right now. Yes. And so I could not have ever said luck without Mike's help. Mike's a guy who has been on the podcast, and he helps me. With stuff like that, I would have never known how to get it set up. I didn't have that deep of a knowledge of it. But man, it works really well. Like it's just fantastic. And loop was also fantastic. So

Sarah 50:20
I've been lurking in the background of IEPs for a while now just reading and watching and watching and reading. And I'm like, that's, I think where I want to try next.

Scott Benner 50:29
There's a lot of initial settings that I don't have the first idea of what they do. And I haven't even dug into it yet. It's just working so well. It kind of doesn't seem to matter. Right? That's great. This is I don't know if I've said this on the podcast yet. Probably not because it only happened the other day. But we are experimenting with a GLP for art into. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So she probably has PCOS? Yeah, oh, shoot, I'm sorry. I'm gonna guess like, you know, she's got symptoms. And, you know, acne bothers her tough periods. Like that kind of stuff. Right. And so, her endocrinologist who is, you know, some people might know, for the podcast, but she's like, I think we should try this. And she tried to put it through an insurance would not cover it. So she gave us a, what's the word, I'm looking for a sample. And it's a very low dose, like quarter of a milligram enter the mean, and tiniest little bit. The doctor's like, I don't think we'll ever get past a half a milligram on this. But she's like, you know, we'll find a way to get it for you, we're only going to use like a pen every two months. You know, there's ways to get it outside of insurance. It shouldn't be too cost prohibitive. And we'll know in a couple of months if this is actually valuable for or not, it's not like it's going to be something like huge cash outlay. And then like a year from now, like, oh my god, what a waste of time. You know, like, so. I was like, Yeah, let's definitely try it. This is the same doctor who a year ago was starting to say to me, like maybe we should put her on Metformin. But then she started seeing so much good, like feedback from the GLP peas. And so like so here's a an example. That's not scientific at all. But I use, we go V for weight loss. I just buttoned up a weego V diary this morning. I could not believe it. I cried. While I was like making my diary entry that's never came anywhere. I was like, crying because it significantly changed my life. I've you people are going to hear me say over and over again. I just don't think my body ever worked. Right? I don't know why. Now it seems to work well haven't drastically changed what I was eating wasn't eating poorly before, like this whole thing. Right. And so my wife using it as well. And she had, you know, of course, got hypothyroid ism, and had it for seven years on treated, which led to an awakening that she's now working off with this, we go V fantastic. Anyway, she's in a Facebook group. And my wife is like, they actually call them like ozempic babies. And I was like, what do they call us on pick babies, she said, So many women who like their whole lives could not get pregnant, who are now on ozempic or Manjaro, or something like that us and we go for weight loss one of those GRPs. And they respond like it feels like almost spontaneously getting pregnant. And I was like, huh, and she goes, they're saying it's got something to do with hormones. And like these, a lot of these people had PCOS symptoms, like this whole thing, like kind of like piecing it together. So you look online. And you know, there's some studies going on about that are very positive. I mentioned that a doctor doctor is like, I just got back from a conference about this. I'm hearing the same thing. Let's give this to Arden and see if we can help her with her. Like, you know, like stomach pains around her period and stuff like that, like maybe this will really help her. So that's what we're doing. But I'm also have people coming on who are type one who are using it. And their insulin use is significantly lower. Like interesting. creepily lower. In some cases. Like some people, it's a 20% decrease. But I have a little girl coming on with her mom, like she's 14. She's down to just Basal insulin. Like

Sarah 54:15
she took she took her pump off. How long has she been type one

Scott Benner 54:19
for I think a couple of years. But she's obviously still in some sort of like a long, like protracted honeymoon. Right? Right. Cuz I mean, you're not getting away with not injecting for food. Like if you've got listen, if you've got full blown type one and you're not like ejecting for food, something else is going on. So you know, but she's you know, maybe it's gonna get a break from it for a little while, like you know, so I believe based on nothing but my own experience that she LPS we are just scratching the surface on the different things they're

Sarah 54:51
going to do for people. Yeah, yeah. Because that's really interesting that it's that it'll be interesting to see what it does for Arden, my kiddo seems to have some of the similarities that Arden had with her periods and whatnot. And I've tried the inositol. And I've tried, she doesn't get the stomach like pain stuff that Arden does, but she gets a lot of the other. The other things. It'd be interesting to see how Arden does with it. Yeah,

Scott Benner 55:18
did the analysis while not help her with like, bleeding in length of periods?

Sarah 55:23
Yeah, it does. But she's 15 Right now, and she doesn't always take it. And I can only fight so many battles.

Scott Benner 55:32
Fascinating. Like, just drink this. You're gonna drink something today. Just drink this. What are you doing? Just drink this stuff?

Sarah 55:36
Let me drink is fine. Just put it in your water. You said you don't even taste it? Yeah, I know. But I just I can't What if my friends drink my water? I was like, they won't die. their ovaries

Scott Benner 55:44
will be fine. So that everybody what if my friends drink the water? Oh my god. What? Is she a hippie? Who cares?

Sarah 55:52
That's what I've said over the years. I'm gonna just take it. Just take it

Scott Benner 55:56
grandpa used to help people through their highs. They were fine.

Sarah 55:59
Totally fine. Just this is consider this your gift back?

Scott Benner 56:03
No. So it helped her but you still can't get her to do it all the time. Yeah, I

Sarah 56:07
can't get it to do it on time. She has to take a bunch of vitamins for migraines, actually. So it was like a lot, which is actually really helped, which I did want to bring up she she takes a bunch of cuz she was getting these migraines. Like every two weeks, I was like, oh my god, this is terrible. Like you're a mess. So I actually was doing some research online and the local children's hospital had a migraine kind of vitamin supplement repertoire, I guess, if you will. And it has been a game changer for her. And it's nothing expensive. It's like magnesium. There's magical magnesium. Again, it's like Coenzyme Q 10. And some b, b to riboflavin. Or whatever it is. Okay, and just an took about a month for it to kick in. And she maybe gets one. She doesn't have one only eight months.

Scott Benner 56:56
That's terrific. And that great. Yeah, I so badly want to add more supplement supplements to the show like conversations, but finding the right person to talk to about them. It's very difficult. Because it's you so easily could slip down like bro science like charlatan, like, and you don't want to do that. So yeah, I'm giving my whole family like a, like a methylated vitamin right now to see if that helps them with some things like I don't know if it will, I told them like, like, let's do it for a couple of months and see what's up. But to your point, like to two weeks into an art on my garden to vitamins, they're still sitting issues. I take this and I'm like, yeah, like Okay, so like I used to just swallow it. Just just swallow, please. But you know, but she says like her stomach can hurt if she takes them. So we're kind of hoping that maybe calming everything down in her lady bits might make all that stuff a little better. Not not our bits bits, but the bits inside. You know what I mean? Yeah,

Sarah 57:51
yeah, no, it's too technical. Yeah, no, no, the ovaries Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:55
it's basically like, I'm an OB, is what I'm saying. Yeah. You

Sarah 57:58
know, and I was like, I was looking for somebody to kind of help me because I kind of felt like, my daughter's like, overall, like other parts of our health, were starting to like to fall apart a little bit like, she has some different weight gain in certain random spots. And she does have the thyroid antibodies already kind of creeping around. We know that that's going to be that's a watch point. But they kind of they're not even close to two yet. I was looking at them the other day, and they're like, 1.4 there, you know, 1.6. Yeah, yeah, they're kind of there. But I'm thinking, Is there anything that we can do to kind of help? And I thought, oh, maybe there's a functional endocrinologist or somebody like that. Like, like, who Arden sees. And I started looking around, no one will see kids. I can't find anyone to see kids.

Scott Benner 58:44
I had to talk them into that. Yeah, I had to say, Daddy, oh my gosh, she's 16. Don't worry. She'll be 18 Two years. Just see her now. Yeah, just,

Sarah 58:51
they're not interested. They won't even return my phone calls and they want you and it's like they're like, nope. And I said, Well, do you know anybody that does see them? And they're like, No, as soon as you they find out she's a true, you know, even a naturopath, true autoimmune patient that takes injectable insulin, all of a sudden they disappear. They don't want to have anything to do with you. Interesting. I found that a little bit interesting in itself. It's like, just too complicated. I'm out.

Scott Benner 59:15
I've had to be a little persistent a couple of times in my life. And yeah, it's it's a lot of work getting somebody to see see you sometimes. Yeah, yeah, it's such Well, listen, just tell her I said to take the an acid tall and stop it ridiculous. Yeah, I don't know. Like, tell her like my kids over here doing the same thing like garden drink that you've had that water all day. You've drank other things. You say you can't taste it. I've had the same conversations. Trust me. It's just put a scoop of it and you drink just and it's over.

Sarah 59:45
That's all you have to do. Just do it. Stop being so dramatic.

Scott Benner 59:48
But it's interesting. Yeah, I'm not dramatic. Yeah, no, no sure. This isn't drama at all. I've asked you about vitamin 16 times today. It's a lot of fun. And then she's like, when you say it, I don't want to do it. I'm like when I don't say If you don't do it either. It's like you're setting up a no win situation for me here.

Sarah 20:00:08
It is. I know. Okay, great. You've known all day. Can you just do it now? You keep knowing so many things in your 15 year old life. Can you just do it? Could

Scott Benner 20:00:17
you do one of them, boys? Just one of them? Yeah,

Sarah 20:00:20
I know. Yeah. I got it.

Scott Benner 20:00:21
I hear you. Oh my gosh. It's funny. I listen, I try them all with them. By the way. I'm like a call taker. I don't even have that problem. And I'll take them with you. I put them right my mouth and like say, Done, gone by giving them my son. My son's like, bang here. I'll try it. He's like, I'll let you know what I find out. I'm like, Thank you. Thanks, Denise.

Sarah 20:00:36
Thank you, son. Thank you. Yeah. Well, you're

Scott Benner 20:00:39
gonna say someone cut you off. I said, I take them too. And you went Oh, like you had a thought?

Sarah 20:00:43
Oh, yeah. No, I've been taking the inositol to sorry. Yeah, no, I've been taking it as well. And to you know, I'm in the pre menopausal stage of life and need as much support as I can get, so why not give it a shot? It's not gonna hurt me. So I tried it and that's fine. didn't taste like anything

Scott Benner 20:01:00
valuable. Do you notice a difference for anything?

Sarah 20:01:02
You know what? So I'm not pre diabetic at all. And I'm, and I did notice a shift in my agency. Down a point out there a quarter. So not a point. Attentive a point. Okay. Yeah. So I think it's like 5.1 or 5.2. Okay, so it came down. Yeah. So I don't know if it has to do with anything. But you know, what else? What else?

Scott Benner 20:01:24
I've seen people start using it and have different insulin needs. I've seen the other plenty of stories online about people getting pregnant when they couldn't get pregnant using it. Arden's endocrinologist told me the other day, she was just at a conference, and things that help women with, you know, PCOS and those kinds of problems. Do they kind of move things onto a list so that these doctors, these doctors kind of control what other doctors hear if that makes sense. Yeah. And she's like GLP is are firmly moved on to the list now. And so they finally moved. She said, an Astra tal on the list finally. And so now you guys will magically start hearing from your OB he's like, over the next couple of years. Like have you tried this? Have you tried mixing this in water? Like Like, that's gonna start coming up now? You know, slowly is it been circulates out to people. But my doctor Arden still ended

Sarah 20:02:16
up getting it 10 years down up here in Canada. It's shocking how long it takes for stuff to come up here.

Scott Benner 20:02:21
Yeah, you're you're on snowmobiles, so it's Yeah, everything. Thanks. Sorry. Did you get the list of a little girl from Canada was like, oh, there's cars in Canada. And she's you

Sarah 20:02:29
did so well with her. She was so cute. But oh my god, you really it was awesome. You're really good with kids. It was really funny.

Scott Benner 20:02:37
She sent me an email afterwards. I haven't responded to it yet. I don't respond to any of your emails, like in a timely fashion. Not on purpose. So I feel so bad that I like got an email from a nine year old. I was like, I'll get to that in a couple of months. But she was like, my mom didn't trick you into being on the show. You just misunderstood the email. I was like, Oh, okay. Well find that. Oh, and speaking of kids, in such you're such a fan. Next week. I'm recording with Sophia. She's the From Russia with sarcasm girl.

Sarah 20:03:04
I don't know her yet.

Scott Benner 20:03:06
Oh my God. You're gonna love that episode from Russia with sarcasm. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, she came on as a little kid. And she's now like, much older and coming on the show. So good. Yeah. Oh, wait a minute. Do you know I actually have an episode called From Russia with insulin and an episode called From Russia with sarcasm?

Sarah 20:03:27
No, I must. Those must be earlier ones. Because I haven't heard Oh,

Scott Benner 20:03:32
yeah, Sofia's with 2021. The other one was like 2020. Anyway, don't,

Sarah 20:03:37
I might have just missed them. I kind of jumped all around at the beginning, that's for sure. Hey,

Scott Benner 20:03:41
listen from Russia, with sarcasm is one of the best episodes of the podcast. So I will tease it out the tiniest bit. Little girl in Russia diagnosed, not happy with her own health. Parents not able to help her system not able to help her, finds the podcast, figures out all the stuff she needs to be healthier forces her parents to buy it for her, pulls her own health together. I had a girl really, really something right. And now lives in America and contacted me and she's like, Hey, it's Sophia. Like you want to I'm like, Oh my God, I've been waiting to hear from you. I was like, you come back. Because she and I had like the same sense of humor. Except I was of course, you know, 50 years old and she was a child.

Sarah 20:04:26
And her English was good too. Then she's

Scott Benner 20:04:27
terrific. Yeah, yeah, it hurt her English just fantastic. I know it's such a story about I mean, honestly, I think everybody's stories end up being like this right but like she did not give up. She didn't give in and she just like fought for herself even as a child. Yeah, really cool. I'm hoping that her story goes I hope she's not going to get on and be like I use heroin now pretty regularly.

Sarah 20:04:48
So I got this so much better. My blood sugar's are way more manageable.

Scott Benner 20:04:52
I just hoping she's still together. Like I just don't want her to get on and be like, Oh my god. So after six years of homelessness, what I decided to do was Like get I want her story to keep getting better. So hopefully it will we'll find out when I talked to her. You

Sarah 20:05:05
know what personalities like that generally when they take control at such a young age and go for it most of the time that plays

Scott Benner 20:05:11
out? Yeah, yeah. Should be good. That's really great. I just had so many wonderful conversations with people who were just very impressive. Yeah. And yeah, and I feel like everybody could be. Oh, yeah, with the right, like, listen, we'll finish up with a sir. Right? You bet. Sarah and I were talking about this before the podcast started, I think I think I have a way here to talk about it like enough that you'll understand without it being too in the weeds and boring. But most people in the world, listen to podcasts on an Apple podcast app, like on an Apple device with the native Apple podcast app, they very recently changed how the app works. So you're not being served all the episodes the way you used to be. So it's going to be more on you to dig through the app and find the x episodes, which is just sort of not how people work, they tend to listen to what they've been delivered, right. And if you don't believe that, remember, the last time you turn on Netflix, and the you looked up, and you were six episodes into something, it's just how people were. So that helps me with my downloads helps me with my downloads, which helps keep the show popular, which helps me keep interviewing people helps me run the Facebook group, like all that stuff keeps all this alive for people. Anyway, they made a change, and it's impacted the downloads and how people are seeing the page. And it's making me like crazy, like, like, I don't mean that like, in a funny way. I mean, like it's ruining my life. Well, I spent the better part of six to seven years building the podcast up to what it was, and the last two years into making it like a juggernaut. And it and it really is now. And this is going to significantly impact that. It's not going to impact how many people hear the podcast today, it's going to impact downloads, and only by a couple, like Believe it or not, we're talking about like two downloads a person, not even a person two downloads a device a day decrease, but that's going to significantly hit me, that's going to create a situation where the advertisers might panic and think, Oh, my God, like you know, what's happening. And there will be like a, if that happens, the whole thing will just crumble and fall apart. And so I've spent the last number of weeks, just ruminating going over how everything works, seeing what the new landscape looks like trying to figure out how do I like, you know, build back again, like what I'm going to lose, like all this stuff. And I just keep getting hit over and over again with I finally found a way to help people. And it's successful. And now someone's going to try to take it from me and take it from all of you. You don't think of it that way. You're probably thinking like, oh, like, I just want to lose this podcast, which I don't. And I don't think I'm going to that's not the point. The point is, is that for every episode you don't get it's another opportunity where you could have listened and you won't. And then it could end up taking you longer to get to success. Or you might give up because I just stopped giving me those episodes, I guess it doesn't exist anymore. And a lot of people you'd be surprised will just be like, Oh, okay, that's over now. And they'll move on. That's another person who won't one day become healthy and successful. And go on to tell another person about how the podcast helped them. Yeah. And so it could be it could be a thing, where five years from now, the whole thing's over because of a decision that was made by Apple in 2023 in September, and that is not hyperbolic. Like that actually could happen exactly like that. If you don't believe it think back two years ago to your favorite YouTuber, who then all of a sudden said something that the establishment didn't like, and now you don't know where they are anymore. Like so this isn't just happening to me. It's happening to all large podcasts. Yeah, you know, anyway, yeah. Last night, at some point, I was pretty sure I was going to fling myself off the roof of my house. Like that's where I was with all this. I was like, I'm just going to climb up on the roof and die from spinal cord injury. Now, I can't just tell you this anymore, like I fought through. You've no idea i in a million years could not explain to us or anyone listening, how hard it was to take a niche idea like type one diabetes and turn it into an internationally popular podcast. It was getting hard, okay. And it took a lot of will and determination. And I don't come on here and talk about it that way usually, because I'm just trying to put information out in the world conversations that are going to help you all but it's way harder than you think it is. And

Sarah 20:09:39
I can imagine, I've seen people tried to build their little businesses online just like through Instagram and YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and it I see what they go through. It's not for the faint of heart at all

Scott Benner 20:09:51
I am aware of this is probably something I've never said on the podcast. I am aware of 85 other type one diabetes podcasts. that since mine existed, tried to exist and failed. It's not easy. Okay, and I don't want to I don't think there was like in the last 10 years, you know, 1000 type one diabetes podcast, and 85 of them failed. And you know, 900 of them are doing great. That's not the case. No, they're 85 of them fell on their face. Nobody listens to them. For whatever reason, it's not even a judgment of them. It just didn't work out. Mine is insanely big. And there are 12345 others that are mostly hobby level, or, honestly, just how do I say this? They're just people with coaching? Yeah, there are people with coaching businesses who are trying to pretend to make a podcast to get you to pay for their coaching. So that's basically what's going on. Okay. Yeah, and I'm sure there's a couple of nice ones out there that I'm not aware of, like, I have no idea. But mine is the only one that charts and is huge, and like everything. And I just felt like oh, my god, like, something I didn't do is going to ruin or potentially has the potential to ruin this. How do I combat that? Yeah. And I'm like, I'm spinning in circles, trying to figure it out. And then I just realized, I'm telling you this morning, it just hit me. I was like, I'm gonna write a letter to Apple. And I'm going to tell them what they're doing to people with type one diabetes, whether they know it or not, I said it in a very nice way, I laid it all out so they can understand it. I'm sure no one will ever read it. That made me feel better. And then I said to myself, I grew this thing wants by telling good stories, and sharing good content. And I could do it again. Oh, yeah. So and I don't want you to think that the podcast just fell apart. And four people are listening. It's not like that. It's so no back catalogue downloads that bolster my overall number. And that number is comforting to advertisers. Yeah. So even though I'm not going to reach fewer people, and even though I don't think the impact for the advertisers will actually decline at all. It's that big overall number that could scare some people who don't understand the space well into running away. If they run away, then your good friend Scott is now the most popular cashier at Walmart. He's not making a podcast anymore. And then just all but

Sarah 20:12:19
you know what I was thinking, Scott, like, when you because you have the Facebook, such a robust Facebook group all say, Holy smokes, that's great. You have that. So most people who are listening are like, Oh, Scott's podcast went away. They're also probably I'm guessing members of the Facebook group. So there'll be like, hey, no more podcasts. Oh, no, you got to do and then someone will jump on? Probably Isabel, because she's amazing. And say like, oh, no, you gotta go and do this, this and this. Yeah. work

Scott Benner 20:12:49
the way you think. Really? Hey, so yeah, so here's how I thank you for that. Hey, I really appreciated that. I didn't do a lot of Canadian things today, but that one was great. Yeah, here's what here's what it is. The podcast. I haven't apologized yet. I know. That was good. Canadian. I have to apologize. Oh, my God. Oh, I'm so sorry. So sorry for what? I'm really trying not to Oh, I got the last thing. But and so

Sarah 20:13:16
nobody apologizes for that.

Scott Benner 20:13:19
Mapping this donut. Oh. But so the podcast, you got to kind of think of the podcast that Facebook group as separate entities. Oh, interesting. So when it first started, I thought, Oh, my God, this is going to be amazing. Because everybody's gonna find the Facebook group and run and join the podcast. And you know, there's going to be and you might think that's what happened. And to some degree, it does. There are plenty of people who overlap are in the Facebook group, who also listen to the podcast. But most people who listen to the podcast are not in the Facebook group. And for some reason, the people in the Facebook group do not in numbers big enough to make make me happy. Yeah, go listen to the podcast. So I think they're two different people. And to me, like some people, like I don't want to hear it. I don't know how to impress upon the people in the Facebook group, like, look, I don't even care if you listen to it, just subscribe for God's sakes, like you'll make the algorithm think that we're more popular than we are. And then they'll find out the algorithm will find other podcast people who, like need diabetes, and that will serve it like these algorithms run everything well. And

Sarah 20:14:20
to be honest with you, this new the new changes to the Apple podcasts kind of ticked me off because I don't want to listen to the other podcast. I've always listened to, you know, to the juice box first, and then I have other ones and other genres that I listened to, but all of a sudden the other diabetes podcasts are coming up like these people. It doesn't work for me there. It just doesn't work for me. I don't want to hear them and they see they still keep showing up. Which is really annoying. It's

Scott Benner 20:14:45
showing you I'm not like an ad but it is like you might also enjoy this and so instead of giving you the podcast, you've told it you want it saying well what about this one? Yep, yeah, no. So yeah, Apple's goals and my goals aren't the same. My goals are to find people to type on Babies and help them and support them and create a community for them. And their goals are, you know, Hey, Scott, we want other podcasts to be popular too. And by the way, on a business level, there are a lot of unscrupulous people who let me see the best way to explain this. If you had 100 listeners to your podcast and put up an episode a month, you would probably get about 100 downloads a month. If you put up an episode a week, you'd probably get about 400 downloads a week. So people start seeing that and going, Okay, what else could I do? And then they'll make these like five or 10 minute like, little short, meaningless, nothing episodes, because now they're like, Well, if I put two up a week, then I'll get, I'll get 200 a week, that'll be 800 a month, like like, you know, they start doing that math. And so a lot of podcasts will put up, basically filler, like short filler stuff. They're not trying to help you. They're just trying to get your app to download the thing. So they can go back to an advertiser and say, Oh, my God, I know, you think I only get 100 downloads, but I don't really get 1000. And, you know, like, Can I Can you give me $20? Please, for those 1000 downloads. That's what they're trying to do. Right? And so,

Sarah 20:16:11
I'm amazed the sponsors don't kind of aren't wise to that sort of stuff, though. Well, they must be they

Scott Benner 20:16:16
are to some degree, but they also it's such an emerging thing that a lot of them are just like, 1000. Cool. Here's the $20. Because that's, by the way, how it works. I think it's 20 or $25 per 1000 downloads is what you can charge somebody for an ad. And it's not like it's not like, it's not much No, it's not it would be more than that. Yeah, it's terrible. So like, and by the way, it's not like, it's not like, Hey, Scott, your podcast got 5 million downloads last year. So wow, you must have made what's 1000 divided? What's 5 million times? And by the way, I will tell you that math, 5 million divided by 1000. Is 5000. Opportunities to make $20. Okay, yeah, and so. And so that's, you know, that's 100 grand, and then taxes, right? And then you know, blah, blah, blah, and then you know, before you know it, you've made like $12. Also, that's not how I build it out. It doesn't work that way, you would think it works that way. But those are a lot of back catalogue downloads, which you don't get paid for. You get paid for how many downloads you can get in 724 hours, seven days, 30 days, 45 days. That's it. Okay, so I don't want to give my money away here. But I can basically tell you that advertisers would be thrilled if a new episode got at least 10,000 downloads in the first 45 days. Rarely, it's not five. But how thrilled

Sarah 20:17:44
like, are they just like verbally thrilled? Are they like going to pay you in money thrilled? It

Scott Benner 20:17:49
covers their cost? Okay. Yeah. So like, they're happy with it, it did what they expected it to do. And I'm talking about like, not just like a device company, but like athletic greens, or anybody, like that's what they're looking for, right? So it's please don't think that I'm making $20 for every 1000 into 5 million downloads. That's not how it works. So I'm not like saying, Hey, Apple, you just cost me like all this money. That's not even the case. What they're costing is your engagement with the podcast, which then cost the possibility of you figuring out how to manage your diabetes and be happier, which then costs me word of mouth. Sure. That's what it does. So I'm not wealthy, I make a living and way more complicated than I ever thought it was. Yeah, it's insane. And so then just changing that app a little bit. You think, Well, it's just one app doesn't matter. Like most of the world uses the apple podcast app, like you think, Oh, what about Spotify? I'm not Joe Rogan. Like that's it like Spotify, props up their own shows. They're not helping me. So like, I have Spotify downloads. I'm sure most people who make a podcast if they saw my numbers would be like, what enough? Are you complaining about buddy? Like, like, like, right, but but I'm not complaining about the numbers. I'm not I'm complaining about the life and longevity of getting the information out into the world. Yeah, and I think this is going to, this has the real opportunity to mess that up. So anyway, it's such a shame. Yeah, now I have to go find 1000s 1000s of more listeners, which is not an easy thing to do, to combat what the app change did, to the numbers and to the people, because now now just getting one person to listen doesn't have the same impact on the show and to other people as it used to, I might now need to get 10 people to listen to get the same word of mouth impact as one person would have in the past. And I know that might sound convoluted, but trust me, it's clear Isabel in my mind, all right, you know, so anyway, that's where we are. And yeah, you know, that's what I get up and do every day. And then all I really need the truth of the matter is, is that if a percentage of the People in the Facebook group would just pick up their app and say okay or subscribe or follow the show and make sure that my my settings are set up so that I get new episodes. If they just did that. Then we would be Joe Rogan in the in the diabetes space. But you can't get people to do it. And by you, I mean me, because I've been trying for three years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I cannot get people to leave. Oh, my God, sir. You no idea. It's all horrible. It's not as bad as the making the podcast part and helping people part. That's fantastic. Everything else that goes with it. I don't leave this goddamn room. Yeah, I'm going to tell you right now. I, I was on the verge of tears last night. I was standing in my bedroom getting ready to go to bed. My poor wife is in bed, having worked all day. And I was like, I've been trapped in that kitchen room for nine years to build this thing up and somebody makes an adjustment to a king app. That's it. That's how this all goes to hell. Like I said, I was like, I'm finally got this thing to like a really successful place. And it's not lost on me. If you've ever a kind soul, you might be thinking, Scott, if you help one person you helped. And I do really feel that way. But you don't know what it's like to reach one then 10, then 100, then 1000, then 10,000. Oh,

Sarah 20:21:19
yeah, I I can only imagine I think it would be as one of the reasons why I appreciate the podcast so much is is the truth reach that it's had and that you hear it time and time again and people stories as they come to you and they you know, online or, you know, in the stories that they share on the podcast they're genuinely see. And there's a lot of pressure that comes with that for you a lot.

Scott Benner 20:21:41
Oh, it's it's constant. Like, yeah, I have advertisers who are always looking at me going, how many downloads? Does that have? Pay? We bought it out on that one. What did that one do? How many clicks do you have here? How many downloads? How many clicks, how many clicks, how many downloads, and and the more that this becomes the way people make money, the more they're paying attention to it five years ago, they'd be like, Look, here's some money for ads, we hear good things about the podcast didn't even ask again. They were just thrilled. Now they're like, Hey, we have this AI thing that's tracking your every move. Could you put a pixel on this and a pixel on that pixel on this and I want to make sure that, you know, like, don't use the same link on Instagram that use on faith. I'm one person. I'm just trying to help people with diabetes. I'm like, I can't keep up with all this. Hey, you said phaeochromocytoma wrong in the ad like the Are you kidding me? Like Like I got close enough. Like nobody knows what it is.

Sarah 20:22:30
Nobody knows. Anyways, nobody can spell it to look it up on the Google

Scott Benner 20:22:36
tears except you and the guy you work for it now. Oh, by the way, God bless you. Volkova and I now know how to save your pheochromocytoma. It's fine. But, but like in the moment, you're just like, okay, alright, I'll go say it again. I figured out like I'm right now learning to say so fontal urea. So final? So finally you're in. So final urea. Yeah, I have to say it in an ad. So final urea. So follow urea, I've been watching a goddamn YouTube video of a woman saying it at a conference for a week and a half trying to get ready to record a 32nd ad. So I don't sound like an idiot. And if I mispronounce it, they'll send it back to me and say, hey, you know, you gotta You said so fontal. I'm like, Okay. Anyway,

Sarah 20:23:21
you agree and you redo them all. You redo the ads regularly, right? You don't just have one take and then just keep slotting them in, or do you do that? Sometimes I

Scott Benner 20:23:28
have a number of pre recorded ones. But generally speaking, I sit down during the edit and just I freestyle the ads. Yeah, mostly you don't know because I thought good, but I'm, I'm decent at it. So I like it's different. But it's not like oddly different where won't be helpful. And by the way, I want to just say that so final every so far, I'm never gonna get that right.

Sarah 20:23:47
Now you just got to slow your tongue down a little bit, then you'll get there. That's for G voc hypopyon.

Scott Benner 20:23:51
They are wonderful partners of the pocket like like wonderful and as his Dexcom and Omni pod and you know, contour and cheese all of them. Like I don't even want to miss anybody like a US med oh my god, US med is so, so great. Like you have no idea how they support all this stuff. I'm not complaining about them. I'm not complaining about the work. I'm just telling you and one person. Yeah, I was keeping up with it. But if Apple's going to come along and stand on my throat while I'm trying to say so final urea, well then it's gonna get hard, you know, in a main lake and so, oh, yeah, and I'm gonna go crazy. And I don't want to be crazy, Sarah.

Sarah 20:24:27
No, no, I know. I was one of the questions I wanted to ask you was like, what do you do so you don't go crazy?

Scott Benner 20:24:33
I just make this podcast I don't do anything else. Like you're all welcome. Like you're walking around with your goddamn six eight onesies come here and open a drape for me so I can see the sun. Like by the way, I'm not even kidding about that. I have no soundproofing drapes in my room so that the podcast sounds better. I don't even get to see the sunlight. I'm doing this. Yeah, yeah, and I'm not complaining. Like I'm not just don't make it harder,

Sarah 20:24:57
harder than it is like Just yeah, here's what

Scott Benner 20:25:01
I need. You know, most people would tell you I need world peace, happiness, blah, blah, I need for one in five people in the Facebook group to join, listening. And I need Apple to put their damn app back the way it was. And that literally changes everything for me. And you guys listening?

Sarah 20:25:20
Yeah, well, so it's, it's it's similar sort of similar but different. So you know, in most professions, the longer you get it, you go at your job, the easier it gets, and I'm sure there's parts of your job are more smooth, shall we say, than they were when you first started? You've got some finesse happening on all that kind of stuff. And the systems run better. But the job gets harder. It's not supposed to be that way. So in teaching, I've been teaching I teach part time, and you're at I've been teaching since I was a long time. 20 years, no, not quite 15 years, it's supposed to get easier. while the kids are getting harder. The kids are so much harder than they ever were. The job is harder, it's supposed to get easier, not harder. It's the same thing is happening for you is supposed to I'm good at my job. I know what I'm doing. Why is this still so hard? I don't mind working hard, but don't make it harder.

Scott Benner 20:26:12
Yeah, that is really the piece of it. I'm not gonna, I'm not quitting, like I'm not giving off, like, like, This podcast is incredibly popular, you can lose those downloads and still be orders of magnitude more popular than next thing that exists. So like, I have no trouble with all that. That's all fine. And well and good. But it just, it's crazy. Like, it's just crazy, that, you know, somebody could say, oh, I guess we're just gonna make this the number instead of that the number that they can get. And, and that's it, just like that i i am looking at it's two o'clock in the afternoon. And I know how many downloads I should have right now, based on how many devices have downloaded the show so far today. And this is pretty much I'm at 2021 numbers right now. And so they knocked me back two years. So now I'm gonna have to climb back out of that again, for two years, but you'll never know listening, like you're gonna get like, there's a great episode of today with a dad whose kid was diagnosed and they went on this road trip and it plays baseball, and you're just gonna keep getting that. I mean, once in a while you get me bitching like this, but other than that, like, you're not gonna know the difference? No. And it will be it'll grow again. That'll be that like, it's just it's going to but Jesus Christ, like, I feel like I climbed up a mountain, literally put my hand on the summit of it, and someone stepped on my hand and kicked me back off again. Push it back down again, is exactly what it feels like. So yeah, yeah. Anyway, I'm

Sarah 20:27:43
sorry. Because you're, you do such good things. So it's a shame when you when the good people get kicked. Well,

Scott Benner 20:27:50
don't think it hasn't occurred to me that while I'm complaining about this, your dad got cancer for doing the right thing. So I feel like I'm complaining about this right now. So, yes, okay.

Sarah 20:28:00
That's not a problem. Okay, seriously,

Scott Benner 20:28:03
I I'm a douchebag for saying this out loud. No.

Sarah 20:28:06
It's fine. You're allowed he could kvetch with the best of them, so don't worry about it. Please.

Scott Benner 20:28:11
I love to complain. I don't understand people who don't like to complain. What do you think about?

Sarah 20:28:16
My my daughter complaints? My type one complaint sometimes and sometimes I just sit down like Kay, wait, are you is this a listen or do you want some input? She's like, I just need you to listen. I was like, Cool. Okay, thanks for the heads up on that one. I just sit there driving the car. She's just bitching.

Scott Benner 20:28:29
I was like, Why do you complain? I'm like, I'm not complaining. I'm just explaining it. That's exactly I wish people know that the last 15 minutes. I wasn't complaining. Like I just this is how my process is I like get through things and figure them out. So you know, you have your process. I have mine. Leave me alone. Stop judging me. Absolutely. Thank you so much, sir. I appreciate it. You're most welcome. Thank you.

A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, G voc glucagon. Find out more about Chivo Capo pen at G folk glucagon.com forward slash juicebox. you spell that GVOKEGLUC AG o n.com. Forward slash juicebox. I want to thank the ever since CGM for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast and invite you go to ever since cgm.com/juice box to learn more about this terrific device. You can head over now and just absorb everything that the website has to offer. And that way you'll know if ever sense feels right for you ever since cgm.com/juicebox. If you're living with type one diabetes, the afterdark collection from the Juicebox Podcast is the only place to hear the stories that no one else talks about. From drugs to depression, self harm, trauma, addiction, and so much more. Go to juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and click on after dark. There you'll see a full list of all of the after dark episodes. If you're not already subscribed or following in your favorite audio app, please take the time now to do that it really helps the show and get those automatic downloads set up so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrong way recording.com

#1246 Weekly Diabetes News 7/1/24

Topics include the US launch of Medtronic's MiniMed 780G system, promising research from Johns Hopkins on a monoclonal antibody for type 1 diabetes, and gene therapy advancements by Fractal Health. Scott also discusses legislative news on CGM access in Illinois and early developments in oral insulin formulations.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 1246 of the Juicebox Podcast

I'm back with another quick episode to catch you up on what's in the news for type one diabetes this week this is for the week of July 1. 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.

sup everybody, I'm back to read you the news about diabetes. Nice to me, I'm just I scour the internet for you. I find stuff. It's interesting to me, I come here and I tell you about it. And 15 minutes later, you've got all that stuff in your head without any of that pesky reading. Hey, if you want to save 30% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com Just use the offer code juice box at checkout. And of course, when you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D. Drink ag one.com/juicebox if you have type one diabetes, and you're from the US or you're the caregiver of someone with type one, please go to T one D exchange.org/juicebox. and complete the survey completing the survey helps type one diabetes research and it only takes a few minutes. Before we get started, let me tell you about the 2025 Juice cruise. Now what is that exactly? Well, I'm going on a cruise. And I'm inviting all of you to come with me. This is going to happen in June of 2025. But if you register by August 1 2024, you're going to receive a $25 onboard credit per stateroom. This Cruise is great for you if you have a family with children with type one if you're an adult with type one or anywhere in between. I got a note the other day and said I have type two diabetes. I'm a listener and I want to come I was like absolutely Let's go. Everybody is welcome. Bring the kids bring yourself bring the fam. Let's get out in the sun meet each other really experienced community one on one and have a great time. Maybe you just want to meet other Juicebox Podcast listeners. Maybe you want to meet other people that you know from the private Facebook group or perhaps you just have never met another person with diabetes and this is your chance. We're gonna fill that boat with beeping. Understand, it's gonna be very real. What is that? Somebody's blood sugar's high. This Cruise is on the Royal Caribbean International's mariners of the sea. It departs Galveston, Texas on Monday, June 23. It's a five night trip with ports of call in Galveston Costa Maya and Cozumel. Now for two of the days of the trip, there'll be talks, I'll be giving talks meet and greets Q and A's, we're going to bring on some special guests to talk to and right now I'm going to start to reach out to advertisers of the show to see if they'd like to send out customer service people so that you actually have somebody from specific companies to ask questions of I thought that was kind of a nice idea. I'm working on that right now. I don't know if that's gonna happen. It's up to the companies. But we'll find out. If you want to learn more, go to the link or text Suzanne at 817-928-4930. That's poor Suzanne who's about to get a lot of texts. She's running the whole, you know, travel side of this whole thing. The Scotty side of it, if you go to the link, you'll be able to see the different state rooms, the complete charges that are you know, necessary per person, you'll understand what you're talking about before you reach out to Suzanne, or if you just want to reach out to her and get the conversation started. I'm sure she'd be thrilled to talk to you. All right, juicebox podcast.com, or link in the show notes or text Suzanne, and I'll see you on the ship in June. I'm very, very excited to meet everyone. I hope you can come bring the family. Now on to the news. So I searched a little bit did some looking around poking around because ADA is at fourth Scientific Sessions was last week. So I figured there's got to be some takeaways from ADA. Right. The American diabetes Association holds a big conference, there must be news. Here's what I found some interesting stuff. And some stuff that you just kind of expect companies are like our thing is good. Like, okay, well we know about that. That's not actually news. We know you think you think is good, and it probably is but we're looking for new stuff to talk about not just you know, we did a study and you know, there's less hypoglycemia if you were an automatic insulin delivery system. Yeah, thanks. We know how about this one I'm going to start here. Medtronic is launching the mini med seven ATG system in Oh, the US us launch of the mini med seven ATG system. The guardian for sensor that's interesting. includes advanced hybrid closed loop technology for automated insulin delivery. Sounds like they're getting their thing into the US. What else here? There are new therapeutic targets for diabetes discussed? Oh, really? I can't wait for that. Yeah, I can't wait for the establishment to realize that maybe your agency should be lower than seven. Boy, a lot of this is probably just going to irritate me, it's going to be stuff we've been talking about for, you know, 510 years on the podcast, where they're like, we've done a study and we've figured it out. There's health disparities in communities. How about that? Who knew? But this is just me being sarcastic with the news. I didn't expect that. But here we are. This is just, this is just research with mice at this point. But it's interesting enough. Where's this over at Johns Hopkins, a drug named M A, B 43. It's a monoclonal antibody. It's only they're doing mice studies right now, but prevents and reverses type one diabetes onset in mice potential for long term use with minimal side effects, beta cells begin reproducing an inflammation decreases. I'm excited about anybody who's looking into inflammation in the pancreas. Very interesting, led by a PhD here. Not a lot more than that. But, you know, I don't like to get too excited about things that work in mice, because they very often don't work in people. But still, I like the direction of that. Now, here's something I actually did find really interesting. I think this is more around type two. But it's very, it's very, very interesting. And here's why. Here's the overview of it. A recent study explored the effects of a single dose of GLP, one based gene therapy, on obesity and diabetes management in mice. Again, mice, but, you know, this is kind of interesting. The therapy is designed to deliver a gene encoded encoding GLP one, which is a hormone involved in blood sugar regulation, and this gets delivered directly to the pancreas. The mice were divided into three groups one receiving gene therapy, one receiving daily semaglutide injections, and one receiving a placebo. During the duration to the initially, excuse me initially followed for four weeks with a follow up period extending to eight weeks for some groups. Now here's the key findings. There was weight and fat reduction, the mice treated with the gene therapy experienced at 21% reduction in fat mass compared to a 16% with the semaglutide After four weeks, ooh. And after eight weeks that gene therapy maintained a 17% reduction in fat mass, even after semaglutide withdrawal. While the placebo group saw no significant effect, no significant change. Hmm. Significant improvements in fasting glucose and insulin levels were observed in the gene therapy and semaglutide groups at both four and six weeks. The third, the therapy resulted in a 36% reduction in total cholesterol and a 51% reduction in LDL cholesterol compared to placebo after two months. And they're saying here the potential is this gene therapy could offer a long term single dose treatment option for managing obesity and diabetes. It aims to provide durable weight loss, and improve metabolic control without the need for continuous medication. So it's something about listen, I'm no surgeon here, or researcher. But what I'm hearing is you take the GLP one, and you magic mix it somehow in a gene therapy situation. And then maybe you're re I don't want to speak for this thing. But maybe you're recoding how things are working. Anyway, it looks like a company called fractal health. They plan to progress the therapy through preclinical development and initiate first in human clinical studies in the first half of 2025. That gets a clap for me. Let's go fractal health looks like they're calling this drug. Is it read Juvia investor's clinical studies, our company I might reach out to them to get somebody on the podcast here. I mean, unless they're listening, and then just please send me an email. I have a lot of time for this. I don't have a lot of time to be sending emails. I'm very busy. Yeah, I don't know if they've got a PR I'll look through there. I'm gonna hold on to this. I might, I might, I might reach out to them. That's not a bad idea. What else do we have here? Did the Hopkins thing. Health Disparities, there's health disparities and communities they figured it out. They just did a research study. It only took a couple of years and they came back and they said things are not fair. Look at you got it. Let's see. Don't you know tandems got that Moby pump now? On the pod five works with Dexcom G seven.

I heard some news from ever since but I can't I gotta make sure I get the details. Right before I bring it to you. Maybe you'll hear about that next week. This is kind of local, but I find this very encouraging. Illinois has passed legislate legislation legislation, expanding access to continuous glucose monitors for Medicaid benefit beneficiaries. That's excellent. This move is praised by the American diabetes Association. It's praised by me too. That's good and more people should be doing that and more states 1,000,000% All right, kids. There's some older stuff here. It's not new news, but it's still stuff that pops up when I'm when I'm talking there's an oral insulin formulation developed by the Artic University of Norway that could potentially eliminate the need for insulin injections. That'd be cool. Very, very early on, but keep working on that for sure. And there was something here about let me find it. Let me find it intermittent fasting. Okay, I got it. This is a UIC research initiative on intermittent fasting with type one diabetes. The study lead Christa Verde, hey, Krista. What's up? You're famous professor of nutrition at the University of Illinois, Chicago. The focus of the study was examining the safety and effectiveness of time restricted eating a form of intermittent fasting for individuals with type one diabetes. I thought this was really interesting. She found there were no adverse reactions. How about that? She's talking about hypoglycemia, diabetic ketoacidosis. In the reviewed studies, participants experience weight loss and lowered average blood sugar levels in some cases. It's like there was a pilot study here. It's still ongoing comparing time restricted eating to calorie counting, and a control group was 60 participants. The recommendation after the study was a patient should consult with their doctors and well that's not great, Krista, but I think what you're really taken from this is somebody's out there doing a study about fasting with type one diabetes, where a lot of you would say, oh, you know, if I fast my blood sugar is gonna get low, where I would say, if your settings were good, you could not eat for quite some time without experiencing a low blood sugar. This is the takeaway here, right? Because people are always wondering like, how do I exercise my blood sugar voice false exercise without any active insulin. That doesn't mean you don't have your Basal going, but it's a really well timed Basal, a well considered Basal, so it's not dragging you lower. I brought this up mainly to remind you that you can exercise fasting and that that's probably a way for you to keep from having a low blood sugar while you're exercising if you have type one, but also Krista viraday. Professor, if you'd like to come on the podcast, give me a shout. I'd love to talk about this a little more. I think it's very interesting and timely, and I think it's important for people living with type one diabetes. Alright, that's it for Scotty reads you the news this week. Don't forget the juice crews link in the show notes link at juicebox podcast.com. And of course, how to do it again. Of course you could just text Suzanne at 817-928-4930 and say I want to know more about the juice cruise and Suzanne will go Why is my phone blown up like this but that's between you and Suzanne. I will not be giving you my phone number and also be very nice to Suzanne. She's lovely. She has type one diabetes. She's a travel agent and this was her brainchild. And she's doing the lion's share of the work. She's a lovely lady, and she'd love to get you set up on the cruise and of course I'd love to see you there.