#1323 School Nurse Mistake

Lauren shared a harrowing experience where her daughter was overdosed by a school nurse.

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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
OmniPod, Hello friends, and welcome back to the juicebox podcast. This one is going to curl your brain up wait to hear this.

Okay, we are talking to Lauren today. She has a number of children. One of them has type one diabetes, and a crazy story about a school nurse that I will not ruin for you here, but just let me say you're going to audibly gasp when you hear her say what she says. And she's got a couple other kids who have a very rare genetic disease that we're going to talk about later has lots to do with their blood sugar, and it's incredibly interesting as well. My notes say this is my favorite episode that I've ever made. We'll see what you think. 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. 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 to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com three simple ways to support the podcast, subscribe or follow in your favorite audio app, tell somebody else about the show, use the sponsor links when you have the need. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Dexcom. Dexcom.com/juicebox get the brand new Dexcom g7 with my link and get started today. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juicebox.

Lauren 1:55
My name is Lauren. I have three children. My oldest, her name is Lacey, and she's a type one diabetic. She was diagnosed at age four, and she's nine. Now, the story that I want to talk about today is on october 3 of 2022 she was overdosed on insulin by her school nurse. The school nurse gave her 150 units of insulin when she only needed one and a half units to cover her lunch. Yeah, that's talk about that today.

Scott Benner 2:28
Lauren, I already have questions. You're in luck. Okay, let's let people in on the secret that I tell people before we start. Go ahead and introduce yourself, and then after you do that, I'll ask you a question, but I don't know what that question's going to be then, while you're introducing yourself, I've never said this before. I don't think while you're introducing yourself, I'm like, I hope I come up with something to say, but I have something to say. Okay, good. Let's start with the school nurse, because this is interesting. The person who did this, had they ever given your daughter insulin prior to that, or was it their very first time?

Lauren 3:01
So yes, so I'll back up a little bit. That morning, I drive my two girls to school and or to the bus stop, and then the bus drives them to school, and when they got out of the car to go to the bus, she had left her phone in the car, and I didn't realize it until I got home, and so as soon as I saw her phone was in the car, I called the school, and I said, you know, I have an appointment. I'll be there as soon as I can to drop the phone off. But, you know, she has a 504 plan. So, you know, we have things to fall back on. Should she not have her phone for her OmniPod? So she had had the OmniPod five at the time, which she still does, and that would just mean that if you need a correction, that, you know, she would get it via either the pen or a syringe or, you know, however it's worded in the 504 plan. And so I called, and I said, I'll be there, so if you want to wait for me, you know, we could just do it via the OmniPod instead of having you give an injection, stuff like that.

Scott Benner 3:59
And she was like, okay, and you said this to the nurse directly?

Lauren 4:03
I said it to the nurse directly. Yes, I spoke to the nurse, yep. And this is a 40 year veteran nurse, apparently, who you know has been doing this for 40 years, had worked in the hospital, had worked, you

Scott Benner 4:18
know, I'm a 52 year veteran of being alive, and I'm an idiot still, so let's see what happens. Wait, but I have a question, though, this this, I feel like you misunderstood my first question, but I want to get you back to your story as soon as I can. But the nurse that did this, not that day, but in all time in history, had that person ever given your daughter insulin in the past, only

Lauren 4:41
via the OmniPod five, not via injection or the pen, okay, yeah,

Scott Benner 4:47
okay, that's all I so they they have practice with your daughter. They know how much they usually get. She usually gets, etc, so Exactly. And so she's also accustomed to dialing the OmniPod up to one point. Five units. Yes,

Lauren 5:02
okay, go ahead. Yeah. She, she normally does the OmniPod, and was very, was very thorough with it. Knew what she was doing. So I get to school right around noonish, and she had, like, literally just given her insulin. And I looked down at my daughter's arm, and I see that she has two injection marks in her arm. And I asked her, Why do you have two marks on your arm? And she said, Well, the the syringe wouldn't hold enough to just do one, so I have to do two. That's what she said. That's what the nurse told my daughter. And so I immediately, because we're in the front and the nurse's office is just like, a couple steps away. So I open the door to the nurse's office, go in there, and I said, Why does she have two injection marks? The nurse tells me the same thing. I said, let's pull out the syringes. She pulls out the syringes, and she says, this syringe is one unit. And I look at it, and I'm like, like, my heart just drops. And I'm like, this is not one unit. This is 100 units. This is 100 unit syringe. And she goes, No, no, this is one unit. And I'm, I'm praying to God, she's, she's correct. And I sat down for a second. I start Googling, and I'm trying to find something that proves her right. Because I'm like, Please let her be right. And I'm googling, and I knew it was just a matter of time, because her blood sugar was already dropping. Yeah. So anyway, I said, let's look at their syringes one more time. And this nurse goes over to the cabinet, pulls out the syringes, looks at them, and I'm like, Are you sure that's one unit? As I'm looking at the 100 unit mark, she's like, I think I made a mistake. And I'm like, yeah. So at that point, she had been dropping, and I had been giving her gummies and gummies and gummies and trying to, trying to get her to get a little bit higher. But at one at that point that we left, it had said low. It just said low,

Scott Benner 7:04
not gonna do it. She needed, I mean, yeah, what was her insulin to carb ratio at that point? One unit covers like 1515, carbs. So 100 units would be 150 carbs, but she got 150 units.

Lauren 7:21
She got 150 so this nurse gave her not only one full syringe, 100 units. She also gave her another 50 units. On top

Scott Benner 7:30
of that, 150 times 15. Hold on a second, Lauren,

Unknown Speaker 7:37
she knew 2250

Lauren 7:39
carbs. That sounds about

Scott Benner 7:41
right. Well, that's about right. Oh, sure. Okay, I'm sorry. I have a couple of questions. Now, were you in shock? Is that why you spent time trying to prove her wrong when you knew she was

Lauren 7:50
wrong? I was completely in shock because I wanted

Scott Benner 7:55
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Lauren 9:03
I want her to be right so badly. I was like, There's no way this. Nurses gave her 150 like, you can't wrap your head around that in the moment, you know, how

Unknown Speaker 9:10
old was your daughter at that point?

Lauren 9:13
Um, she was seven. How

Scott Benner 9:14
much did she weigh?

Lauren 9:16
She weighed maybe 60 pounds at most.

Scott Benner 9:19
And you punched the nurse. How many times in the face before you left the office?

Lauren 9:23
Trust me, inside is 2020? Okay, yeah,

Scott Benner 9:27
okay. I would have been like, oh my god, this is my time. I can actually assault another person, and a jury of my peers is going to let me off. Okay, okay, so wait, so there's not enough carbs in all of the land, and she's not going to be able to eat it all anyway, and so do you hit her with glucagon immediately?

Lauren 9:46
I didn't I, the only thing I, at the moment, thought to do was to rush her to the ER. And while I'm getting her in the car, I'm noticing she's starting to, like, slump over, yeah, and I'm like, Lacy, like. See, wake up, open your eyes. Open your eyes, open it. Like the whole car, right? And I'm like, the house is closer than the hospital, so I rush to my house, and I get on the phone with her endo and the nurse, and I let them know what's going on, and they walk me through the whole glucagon thing, because I get to my house extremely quickly, and I give her the glucagon, she's still, you know, out of it, and I rushed to the hospital. And when we get to the hospital, thankfully, she's able to walk inside by a miracle, like looking back on it, I don't know how she was able to walk inside, but she was able to walk inside. They took her blood sugar, and it was like 79 at that point, I think the glucagon had started working, yeah, and however, you know, flowing through, yeah, it was, it was dropping, dropping, dropping. All night at the hospital, she was on a, like a glucose strip. I bet it was still a drop, like I was. Obviously we're not used to that. I

Scott Benner 10:59
have thought you were going to tell me you went into snakebite mode, cut her arm and sucked the insulin out of her, because, honestly, it would have been one of the things that went through my head. So I might have stuck the syringe back in and pulled and see if I could have got some of it back again. By the way, not not medical advice, because I have no idea if that would work or not. But um, I mean, so you're only three years into diabetes at that point, right? Yeah, okay, because Lauren, between you and I as now we have distance. You made a couple of tactical errors along the way. I did absolutely, yeah. Okay, so I gave your daughter 150 units of of insulin, you should have hit her with a glutagon in that moment. 100%

Lauren 11:44
I completely agree. And I think it was just the fact that I didn't want to believe that, that that's what just happened, like I could not wrap my head around that that had just happened. Are you a

Scott Benner 11:56
kind person in general? Am I a what person? Kind person I'm trying to figure out, like, I'm trying to juxtapose your reaction to my brain, and I can't find any sense in it, because I would have been shooting glucagon with one hand and choking that fcking lady with my other one. Like, yeah, and so like, I mean, listen, people can make a mistake. God bless. But 150 and how about how other kids come through there with diabetes, right? Had she ever, ever drawn up that much insulin in her life?

Lauren 12:29
I have the same questions,

Scott Benner 12:30
damn, right? You do go ahead, yeah,

Lauren 12:32
yeah. So at that point, and even to this day, Lacey is only one at that school with type one diabetes, and obviously that's for a reason. I'm sure that there were other diabetics I had gone through there and were like, you know, screw this place. But

Scott Benner 12:48
she shot so much liquid into her. If I was her, I would have stopped and thought, like, could that little pot even hold all this like, like, Do you know what I mean? Like, it's just such a I'm telling you. Can I ask you, what did, what did she do for a living after they fired her, I have no idea. I she was fired, right? If you take insulin or so final ureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G vo hypo pen. My daughter carries gevok hypopen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes ages two and above that. I trust low blood sugar emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, gevoc hypopne can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use jivo kypo pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at jivok, glucagon.com/juicebox, juicebox gvoke 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 gvoke, glucagon.com/risk. For safety information. She was fired, right? Um,

Lauren 14:20
yeah, and only because I went in there and I had to demand her be fired. I said, I'm not trusting this lady with my daughter. And at that point, you know, she was still treating children with their other there was no type one diabetics except for my daughter. However, she was treating other children with medications. And you know, the they wanted to keep that nurse on, they did everything they could to keep that nurse on. And I had to go to two different meetings and fight for my daughter to get that nurse out of that school. And if my daughter did not like that school as much as she did, obviously she would be out like I would have pulled her immediately. I mean,

Scott Benner 14:57
for nothing. But if your kid dies. Is that manslaughter maybe, like, I don't even know how that works, but like, she would have gone to prison. Yeah, yeah, so, and they couldn't, by the way, in my perfect world, she would have gone to prison. I don't really know the law, but in my world, firing her is like, like, the least thing,

Lauren 15:15
yep, that's the least they should do. Yep, trust me, I know it's so infuriating. And when, when the principal came in to talk to me, and she obviously doesn't know anything about diabetes, even though I have had meetings upon meetings with her about it, she didn't understand the gravity of the situation. She just didn't until I had to pretty much yell at her, and I'm not somebody who raises their voice honestly, I do not yell at people, but this, this whole situation, was just like a nightmare, and it's like, probably the one thing that you know you're worried about happening that's kind of like an irrational fear, but it actually came to light unless

Scott Benner 15:55
it happens to you, and that is less than irrational all of a sudden, yeah,

Lauren 15:59
I guess. So. Okay, so,

Scott Benner 16:00
so listen, here's an important note for people. You know, when people are like, well, I don't want to pre bolus because I'm afraid my blood sugar will drop too fast. Your daughter pre bolus 150 carbs. You didn't even give her a Snickers bar out the door. And how long until they put her on a knife? Well, how long until you hit her with a glucagon? First I did.

Lauren 16:18
I did get, I did give her a bunch of she had so many gummies.

Unknown Speaker 16:26
I know, I know.

Scott Benner 16:31
So she's eating gummy bears. You hit her with glucagon. That that, but my point is, is that bridges the gap, because insulin does not work immediately when you put it in now 150 units and a 70 pound little, pound little kid, you know, you're gonna get some quick motion, but like so you had time to hit there with the glue gun. Then you put her right back in the car and drove the

Lauren 16:50
hospital. Yeah? Well, I did the glue gun in the car. I ran inside with her in the car with the line. And I, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I was shaking like a leaf.

Scott Benner 17:02
Hey, listen, one time when Arden was little, before I knew what I was doing, her blood sugar was falling, like, really quickly, and she got, like, super, like, combative, and she's like, I'm like, oh, drink the juice. And she's like, I want ice cream. And I was like, well, we don't have ice cream. Drink juice. And we were in the car, and so I drove her home, and she's like, why are we here? And I'm like, for ice cream. She goes, that's not the high ice cream I want.

Unknown Speaker 17:27
Oh my gosh.

Scott Benner 17:28
So now I'm speeding to a like, a soft serve place. I'm not lying. I get pulled over by a cop, and in my little ass town with four cops, they're never anywhere when you need them and like so I'm flying down this road, fair enough. He pulls me over. I pull over. I say, I look at him. I go. My daughter has type one diabetes. She has too much insulin. I'm trying to get her to food. You got to let me go. And he goes after I run your license. And I'm like, No. I'm like, what? Okay, here. I said, can I get out of the car and test her blood sugar? I'm testing her blood sugar. It's in like the 40s, I think at that point, right? And he gives me my license back. I looked at him, I said, I'm gonna be speeding again. Please don't pull me over. And I got in the car and I took off. You know, I got a ticket in the mail. Are you kidding me? Motherfucker sent me a ticket. I had to go fighting. I did get out of the ticket, in case you're wondering. Wow, but yeah, he said he mailed me a ticket. I don't know who that person is, but if he's listening, you so. But by the way, anybody could be listening because a woman just messaged my brother at their job and said, Hey, are you the ROB that edits the juicebox podcast?

Unknown Speaker 18:48
Are you kidding me? Oh, my God. My brother

Scott Benner 18:52
goes, A, how do you know about that? And B, my brother's like, I've never told anybody you have a podcast. He's like, it's embarrassing. I was like, I know. And he's like, No, I'm not. And she goes, Oh, and she, you know, she, they started talking about it. But anyway, my brother's name is my other brother's name is Rob. I have two brothers. And so anyway, where are we at? Oh, okay, you're in the hospital, and they're dumping an IV into your kid with dextrose in it. For how long? Just to combat this, 150

Lauren 19:18
units, I want to say eight hours, eight hours, yeah,

Scott Benner 19:22
do you send the bill to the school?

Lauren 19:26
Well, it was wiped clean somehow, the I did, we did try to to sue her, and all the lawyers said, Oh, well, because she didn't die, you pretty much don't really have a case. And

Scott Benner 19:40
if you could go hold a pillow over that kid's head, I think we're gonna be rich, like, well, listen, I mean, she's gotta be protect. I don't know nothing about nothing, but physicians and doctors have to be protected by some good samaritan clause, which I understand. I don't feel like you could wouldn't have been my inclination to. Sewer, but I definitely would have wanted to see her lose her job.

Lauren 20:03
Yeah, yeah. No, definitely. I definitely made that happen at least. And I guess the state had picked up the case, and I'm not sure where it's at at this point, but somebody at the state looked at the looked at everything, and said, something needs to happen. Because this wasn't just like a little oversight, you know what I mean? Like, no, no,

Scott Benner 20:24
it's not just a little oversight. Also, Lauren, it's a willful decision. Like, it's so much liquid. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, so much? Yes, it really is. She's a nurse, so the measurement of units is universal through all liquid medications, right? Did she not go this doesn't seem like one and a half like Do you have any explanation for it? Well,

Lauren 20:49
when I was at that point in the nurse's office, she had said that she thought that it was a TB syringe, which I'm not exactly sure what that means. I'm assuming that a TB syringe is smaller, but even still, what I cannot fathom drawing up that much insulin and injecting a small child with it. Here's

Scott Benner 21:10
another idea, Lauren, you know insulin is dangerous, right? She had to have known that much, right? Absolutely, if you find yourself in a position where you're saying to yourself, I'm not certain if this is the correct amount. Do you not stop? You just go get let's see what happens now, exactly,

Lauren 21:28
yeah, that's what it seems like happened though, you know, it's like, you know, it really does. Listen, there's

Scott Benner 21:34
no chance she was drinking her high or something like that, right? Because that would make sense. Well, that would at least makes sense. You know what I mean? I mean, yeah, little the mothers help her. You know what I'm saying? That might help. Okay, not to say she was obviously, I have no idea who we're talking about. I'm just saying it seems like you'd have to be impaired, if you've been a nurse for 40 years to make that

Lauren 21:55
absolutely I agree. I completely agree. Okay, yeah, and she was, like she was an older lady. I'm not gonna say any names, but you know, she was an older lady who seems like she knew what she was doing, which is why I trusted her.

Scott Benner 22:09
My mom was an older lady. I wouldn't have trusted you with anything if I'm being perfectly honest with him, and I'm 10 years I'm 10 years away from you not being able to trust me. In case you're wondering. Well anyway, that's terrible. I would she contrite? Did she apologize? Or Yes, really,

Lauren 22:28
she did apologize. What she said after she said, I think I made a mistake. I'm so sorry. That was the first time. And then she just kept saying she was sorry, and she did call me later that night to check on her, and, you know, it's so like, it's so infuriating that she did what she did, and at the same time, she's calling me and apologizing, and you know, she was crying on the on the

Scott Benner 22:55
phone, a lovely person, you know, yeah, and,

Lauren 22:59
but It's also in the same at the same time. It's like, I think I would have put if I were in that position, you know, however she she continued going to the school and treating children and kind of acting like nothing happened. So mommy,

Scott Benner 23:14
my stomach hurts. How come I drank a quart of Tylenol at school today? Yeah,

Lauren 23:18
exactly. But like, who knows? You know? Like, nobody knew at that point. And if I was not there to bring her her phone, she would have just sent her right back to class after the 150 units, and she would have been gone. Let's be

Scott Benner 23:33
clear, you getting there when you did absolutely saved your daughter's life. Yeah, she would have been just so dead, like, like, there's no, exactly, no nothing. Would have got her back once the insulin was rolling, and

Lauren 23:47
they would have to figure out, you know, what had happened. And the nurse would have been like, oh, I don't know, you know.

Scott Benner 23:57
Well, they would have seen the vampire bite on her arm and maybe figured it out. Like, maybe listen, not for nothing, but not that it would have been her responsibility to but your daughter didn't do the like, Hey, I've never gotten two of these before in my life.

Lauren 24:10
I believe she did question her like, why are you giving two? And the explanation was the same as given to me. That doesn't all fit. It didn't all fit. Yeah, exactly. Hello.

Scott Benner 24:22
Can I continue to, like, sprinkle common sense on this? Because the manufacturers of insulin needles would obviously manufacture needles that don't hold enough insulin for someone to use.

Lauren 24:36
Literally labeled units. It literally says units on it. I'm

Scott Benner 24:40
only 52 I can't see without my glasses, so I don't know that part I don't understand, okay, but, but like, but I'm talking like bigger ideas, right? I'm in a room with a computer monitor, a computer monitor company wouldn't make a monitor with the image on the back of it, because I need to see it if people are regularly giving them. Insulin? Wouldn't the needles be big enough to hold the insulin? Like, that's exactly. That's a thing. Your common sense should go, hey, hold up a second. Like, you know what I mean? And I don't know if it's age or comments, I don't know what. I don't know the person, obviously. And I'm not trying to say that I do. I'm just saying big picture is a lot of confusing things in this story.

Speaker 1 25:18
Yes, you know what I mean, there is,

Scott Benner 25:22
did it have any psychological impacts on you,

Lauren 25:24
on me? I mean,

Scott Benner 25:27
have trouble leaving her with people or anything like that after that?

Lauren 25:29
Absolutely. I mean, it's always kind of been that way, and I think this just kind of made it worse, because I guess I live in a small town where there's not many people diagnosed with diabetes. And I literally know one other family who has type one, and that's pretty much it leaving her before this happened with somebody I really didn't do unless it was like my mom, who I had trained for months before, you know, sure. And so even after this, you know, I still, she's still extremely sheltered. And, you know, I'd

Scott Benner 26:04
be wrapping that kid with bubble wrap and armor. I'd be like, listen, well,

Lauren 26:09
I have three children with medical conditions, and my other two, it happens to be a genetic condition, and they are actually hypoglycemic. So I have a hyperglycemic and I have a hypoglycemic.

Scott Benner 26:21
Wait your kid. You have two younger children whose blood sugars are always higher, are always lower. Excuse me, you said hypo. I miss surgery. Okay, all right, so they're Oh, no kidding. What is that? Is that a like a diagnosable thing?

Lauren 26:36
Yes, it's, it's a long name. It's called dopamine beta hydroxylase deficiency, and only 30 people in the world have ever been diagnosed with it. And it's where your body has a complete deficiency of adrenaline and norepinephrine, 3030,

Scott Benner 26:53
yes, I'm assuming you've had your husband's tubes tied, or your tubes tied, and your husband's got like, yeah, you're not gonna

Lauren 27:00
make it as soon as we found out with genetic is, yeah, we were done.

Scott Benner 27:04
What a pairing you two are, right? Do you get along really well? At

Unknown Speaker 27:10
least we do.

Lauren 27:13
We are a great match. It's just we both happen to have a recessive variant that only a handful of people have. And, you know, that's crazy. That's just kind of how my life kind of goes. I feel like everything happens for a reason, and I'm kind of like the guinea pig in life, Lauren.

Scott Benner 27:33
There are so many people in the world this. Odds of you matching up with that boy are so slim. That's crazy, telling

Lauren 27:39
you, I'm telling you, they they said it was astronomical that we found each other and we're not related.

Scott Benner 27:48
Did they test? Did they go, Uh oh, they did. Yeah, this lady might have married her second cousin. Hold on, a second. You imagine? Can I imagine? I mean, after this story, sure. Why not,

Unknown Speaker 28:00
right?

Scott Benner 28:01
Jesus Christ, did your daughter? Sorry.

Unknown Speaker 28:08
No, I love it. So

Scott Benner 28:10
I guess are there other people in the town married to relations? No, okay, good. It's

Lauren 28:17
just the chances are higher if you're related of having the same that's what I meant by that.

Scott Benner 28:23
No, no, I knew what you meant by it. I was just thinking, like, it might be more common to marry somebody you're related to than somebody who you have, like, like, these two genetic like, matches with. It's really just

Speaker 1 28:34
incredible. Yeah, it would be, but, yeah, okay,

Scott Benner 28:37
how do you help the other two kids? What's the the treatment or the help for them, pretty

Lauren 28:41
much just give sugar. Um, it's they get hypoglycemic, especially when they're sick, so they have to, like, have sugar or carbs every like two to three hours when they're sick, during a regular day, they can't sleep longer than six ish hours, because that's when they really start to drop? How far will they drop until they're dead? Honestly? Seriously? Yeah, my son, he's two now, but June 25 of last year, I went to go wake him up, and his Dexcom said no signal. And it hadn't said no signal for that long. It had been, maybe been like 30 minutes, yeah, um, went to go wake him up, and he was limp. Checked his blood sugar, and it was like 26 I didn't know it at the time. However, he was having silent seizures, which I had, no I didn't know anything about sure, you know, called the hospital and everything. And when he came to he started having, I guess more you know you could see the seizure. So the doctor had said he had been having silent ones, and now he's having to where you can see them. I'm not really sure what that's called, but he was like biting his tongue and stuff. So, yeah, he they because they don't, they cannot get their stored glucagon. Yeah, naturally, they can't access it, because you need adrenaline to do that. That's why it's so dangerous.

Scott Benner 30:06
So this is a vigilance thing. You have to be constantly at this. Yeah,

Lauren 30:09
I have all three on dexcoms, yeah, it's yeah, it's a lot, yeah,

Scott Benner 30:15
it's a lot. How old are all three of them? Again, they're nine and

Lauren 30:20
nine, six and two. Oh, my God.

Scott Benner 30:22
So what's the plan? You're just gonna, like, go out for cigarettes and not come back. What do you what do you think they're doing? You're gonna be an old lady when you're 20 more years. People are gonna be like, That's Lauren. What is she 80? She's like, No, she's 45 like, Oh, no kidding.

Unknown Speaker 30:41
It's her kids.

Scott Benner 30:41
Your kids are dragging her down. Like she actually kept them alive. It's insane. Like, seriously, though, like, not to be a bummer, but you did come on and talk about the lady trying to, like, off your kid. Yeah, it's already in your head, right? I'm going to send them away. They're going to fall asleep and they're not going to wake up.

Lauren 30:59
Absolutely. I don't even think about sending them away. To be completely honest with you, honestly, my younger two would not be here if I was not completely like because with their condition, and I didn't know this till afterwards, of course, but with their condition in the third trimester, your body or you need norepinephrine in order to continue the third trimester. And so I did have two stillbirths in the third trimester, after I had my oldest, which now we know is due to this condition. So like every single aspect, like all three of my children, would be dead if, if there was no intervention, like Lacey with a type one, and then my youngest two with this condition. They had to have emergency C section in order to be, you know, alive.

Scott Benner 31:45
Tell me you've had five pregnancies, two of them ended in the third trimester with a stillbirth. Yes, yes. Jesus, are you okay?

Lauren 31:54
Seriously, I'm not, but I'm hanging in there. I'm not,

Scott Benner 31:56
but I'm hanging in there. That's the most honest goddamn answer anybody's ever given to that question? No, Scott, actually, I'm not okay.

Unknown Speaker 32:05
I mean, would you be but no, I

Scott Benner 32:07
wouldn't be. That's why I asked. That's why I asked. So therapy? Do you see an actual psychiatrist? Does one follow you around all day? Like, how do you deal you drink? Are you a drinker? Lauren, are you putting them away? No. What's going on. I

Lauren 32:21
think my kids kind of keep me so busy that it's like, you know, I don't really have time to even think about other things. But, like, honestly, no, I did do therapy for for a while, and, you know, that's why I'm here today.

Scott Benner 32:37
Okay, your husband is he rich, handsome, got a really big like, what's the deal? Like, is something is making you happy? Or are you looking at him thinking I could have picked someone else? Like,

Lauren 32:50
he's a very good guy. He is extremely smart. No, he, I've known him since middle school. And, yeah, we, we're just, you know, like I said, I feel like everything happens for a reason. So I feel like something has, has to be at the end of this, you know, like, Lauren's

Scott Benner 33:06
down to Lauren. How old are you? How old are you? I'm 31 you're 31 and you're down to, there better be a Jesus at the end. And he better put me, yeah, there better be like, I better go live in a nice, like, maybe a park setting. I would like a castle. I'm telling you. God, damn, 31 years old and you're like, you better be can gift at the end of this.

Speaker 1 33:35
Oh, my god, yeah, my No, I

Scott Benner 33:42
Why am I doing this? How did the kids I'm sweating, I'm laughing so hard, it's ridiculous. All I can picture is you walking around muttering to yourself in the quiet moments.

Lauren 33:57
You must have a camera.

Scott Benner 33:58
Oh no. I just know people. Learn, and I understand implications of things the kids, did they know how screwed up things are, or do they live pretty normally.

Lauren 34:09
They don't have any kind of, like, other issues other than, you know, shutting off. Yeah. I mean, as as far as you know, cognitively, they are completely, quote, unquote, normal, but they have to have a Dexcom, and they complain about that. They understand, and I've tried to explain as much as I could.

Scott Benner 34:31
So what's their understanding of the eating thing? Because you said sugar specifically, but could it be any carbohydrates?

Lauren 34:36
Yeah, actually, like, carbs are better for, like, when they're sleeping. Yeah, yeah, it takes longer, like starchy stuff takes longer to, you know, break down. But

Scott Benner 34:47
is this having an impact on their weight? Is to the point where it's not healthy amount of calories? Or do you have that figured out?

Lauren 34:53
Yes, they have, like, a sort of a little bit of a faster metabolism. And as far as the research. Search goes. There's not, there's not a lot of research at all, but the but what I can find is their metal metabolism seems to be a little bit faster than the average, and that's why they're able to keep up there. Because if you think of stimulants, stimulants stimulate, you know, norepinephrine and adrenaline in your body. And because they lack that, there has to be some kind of other mechanism, you know, coming into play. Otherwise they would just be obese. You know,

Scott Benner 35:28
how did you figure this out in such a small town? Did you have to go to a children's hospital? Or were they actually able to figure it out there,

Lauren 35:34
after multiple so many hospital visits, they referred us to a pediatric geneticist. We live in Florida. So this was in Orlando that they were able to figure out what was going on after they did after we were cleared from genetic, you know, things, I asked to go further, and I say, Could we just do a, like, a whole, you know, Genome Sequencing thing? And the geneticist was like, I don't think we're going to find anything, but, you know, I can try to push insurance to see if we'll cover it. And I was like, please. And because I did that, you know, she she called me back, and she was like, You will not believe what I found. And she was in shock,

Scott Benner 36:13
I bet I want to look it up. I want to know how to spell it. I want to know how to spell it again. But first I opened up a Google page, and I typed in what is. Then I was going to ask you to spell the the thing, sure, yeah. Before you do, let's look at what other people have been googling. What is CTE? I'm going to blame the Tom Brady roast for that. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 36:38
okay.

Scott Benner 36:38
What is Hoda? Is she not like the person from, like a TV show?

Lauren 36:43
Oh, yeah, she's from, yeah, that morning show, right? Yeah. What

Scott Benner 36:47
is my IP address? Oh, what is Doge, D, O, G, E, that's a, like, Bitcoin kind of a thing. I

Lauren 36:56
right, yeah.

Scott Benner 36:57
What is Ramadan?

Unknown Speaker 36:59
What is today.

Scott Benner 37:01
You're telling you're telling me that the way some people figure out the date is to write into Google, what is today. What is today. I want to say right now, if you do that, stop listening to the podcast. I don't want you as a listener. Okay,

Lauren 37:16
what is the be giving insulin? If that's what you're Googling, yeah,

Scott Benner 37:19
if you're Googling what is today? You shouldn't be giving people medication. There's a calendar. Also, there's 1000 better ways to phrase that. What is the weather? What is the weather today? Also, I don't agree with that. I like looking outside if you wanna know what the weather is, what is mewing and what is a solar eclipse? Interesting. Do you know what mewing is? Well, so

Lauren 37:46
I have a nine year old, so I think that I don't, I don't 100% No, but it has something to do with like, this newer generation.

Scott Benner 37:54
I'm clicking like it's the only it's the only one I don't know. I was so proud to know that today is Thursday, the 16th Hold on a second mewing is an internet craze that promises to change the shape of your jaw line and fix other problems.

Unknown Speaker 38:11
That's not what I thought it was

Scott Benner 38:14
Lauren's like I thought it was a sexual position form of oral posture training purported to improve jaw and facial structure. It was named after Mike and John mu the controversial British, British orthodontist who created the technique as part of a practice called orthotropics. Does mewing actually reshape your jaw? I don't care if it does or not. I want to be clear, but I do want to say this, Lauren and I know you might be disappointed your episode is 100% called what is mewing.

Lauren 38:50
Oh God, all

Scott Benner 38:53
right now spell this thing that your poor two kids have. Okay,

Lauren 38:55
so dopamine, D, O, P, A, M, I, N, E, next word is beta B, E, T, A, hydroxyl, hydroxylase, h, y, D, R, O, X, Y, L, A, S, E, deficiency,

Scott Benner 39:12
also known as dopamine, beta mono, oxygen, yes, is an enzyme that in Humans, is encoded by the D BH gene, dopamine, beta hydroxylas catalyzes the conversion of dopamine to noreparin norepinephrine. The three substrates of the enzyme are dopamine, vitamin C and oxygen. How about that? And your kids just don't have that. It's a deficiency, right?

Lauren 39:39
Yeah, it's a complete deficiency. So they do not create DBH at all, which means they do not create the norepinephrine or the adrenaline. Does this

Scott Benner 39:47
sound? Right? Is a condition that affects the autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary body processes such as the regulation of blood pressure, blood temperature. I'm going to guess blood glucose is in this list too, huh? Yeah.

Lauren 39:59
When they become around the teenage years is when they have a little bit of it now, but the orthostatic hypotension, which means when you stand up, your blood pressure drops to the point where you can faint. They have it a little bit now, but it's just going to get progressively worse. There's a medication that's called droxy dopa, which acts as kind of like a synthetic precursor, so it acts as DBH, but not naturally. So that helps with the orthostatic hypotension. But is it

Scott Benner 40:29
just so few people have it that there's no medication for it, or is that there's no way to impact it with a medication?

Lauren 40:35
Yeah, the drugsy dopa does help. It's never my daughter is actually the first child to be on it. So that's kind of scary. And, yeah, I'm serious, yeah, the dosage that she's on right now is like 40 milligrams twice a day, but adults are known to have like 600 milligrams three or four times a day, so the dosage is like, all over the place and holy, you know, obviously it's not a perfect science. So, yeah,

Scott Benner 41:05
this is terrible. Like, I'm sorry to say it like that to you, but like, yeah, sudden drop in blood pressure, severe when getting out of bed in the morning during hot weather. As a person gets older, deficiency. Experience extreme fatigue during exercise due to the problems maintaining a normal blood pressure, droopy eyelids, nasal congestion. Males may experience retrograde ejaculation. Now, for those of you who don't know what that means, the discharge of semen goes backwards into the bladder. Less common that I mean, less common features include unusually large range of joint movement, like hypermobility and muscle weakness.

Unknown Speaker 41:47
Holy Christ, yeah,

Scott Benner 41:50
yeah, you're not okay. No, no, yeah, you answered honestly. I got that. Okay, good, yeah, no. Do you cry a lot? I'd cry a lot.

Lauren 41:57
I used to not as much, is kind of like the normal, I guess I've kind of transitioned into this being a little bit more, you know, Lawrence, like I said something, I have resting

Scott Benner 42:08
sad face exactly well, how do you keep up the thing you're supposed to do as a parent around your kids, the like, every little thing gonna be like, how do you do all that for them?

Lauren 42:20
I try to compare them to, like, you know, worse situations. Honestly,

Scott Benner 42:25
have you seen Frankenstein again?

Lauren 42:29
Well, like, like to be completely serious with my daughters that type one diagnosis, we didn't know what the heck it was like. I had only heard of type one, you know, a handful of times, and I still wasn't 100% sure. So when she had the symptoms of, like, losing weight, like she was so skinny and she was vomiting, and the two things that popped up when I would go online was type one diabetes and cancer. And so I'd, I'd say, there's so much worse that you can have, you know, she complains about the pod, or she complains about, you know, my, my other kids will complain about the Dexcom, and I'll be like, there's so much worse. Like, we're lucky that, you know, it's not worse. And obviously I do mean that, but you know, it is hard, because they do have it pretty rough. So yeah, just trying to see the the light. Well,

Scott Benner 43:18
listen again, to be serious, you have to, first of all, yeah, like, and yeah, it does give you, I mean, this is not a thing you would have asked for, but you have more perspective at 31 years old than most people are going to gather, gather in five lifetimes and that, and that will be valuable. Like, like, moving through, you know, for your kids and for you and for your husband, everybody else, I guess that's really the move though. Like, how do you not say to them, like, at least it's not that and to try to make them feel a little better. So, I mean, I guess there's no I have to ask you, like, if you could give one of these away, the diabetes, or what your other two have? Like, there's no, like, pause, even, right?

Unknown Speaker 43:59
Like, diabetes is way easier or no?

Lauren 44:02
Well, they are both very hard in their own ways. But I think the way I think of it in my mind is my youngest two, like, they shouldn't be here, you know, according to nature, because we had to, like, intervene. So during my pregnancy, I had to be seen every single day at the hospital to measure what's called the umbilical artery, because it's very technical and complicated, but they get reverse umbilical flow in their umbilical cord, and when that happens, you have to deliver that day like so they shouldn't be here. You know, it's hard for me to think which one I would take away, because they're both. I know that that my younger two are going to progress, and I don't know what the future holds. You know what I mean? So

Scott Benner 44:51
I have such a difficult question that for the first time, and I'm not kidding you, I stopped myself from asking a question, and I don't. Well, I don't know if I can say it out loud or not. Please ask it. I'm less worried about you and more worried about what people are going to think about me. Oh, gosh. So the two stillbirths happened prior to these children being born, right?

Lauren 45:15
Yeah, my oldest, who does not have that condition, however, does have type one diabetes. Was my first, and then after my first, the two that we lost, okay, we're in the middle,

Scott Benner 45:25
and then you find out this thing, when, like, when do you know what's happening during the second or during the, what I guess would be your fourth pregnancy, or after they're both born? When do you learn about the the issue,

Lauren 45:41
um, I learned when I was eight weeks pregnant with my fifth child, so with my youngest now. So I was already pregnant when we found out it was genetic. Because we did get cleared by the geneticist after we did the initial test, okay, and she had said to me, you know, there it's so unlikely that this is genetic. Like she didn't even want to do the in depth, you know, whole genome sequencing, because she she was like, we're not going to find anything. Well,

Scott Benner 46:08
there's another person who let you down. So Exactly, yeah, but so when you know that is there a moment in that fifth pregnancy where you think, I'll let this go naturally to its conclusion and not intervene, or Absolutely

Lauren 46:22
not. You never know, knowing what I knew like, because I had to give birth to pretty much full term, you know, infants who had passed, and I knew something, so I did something, you know what I mean, like, I would never, yeah, yeah, if it, it would have turned out horribly if I didn't intervene. So, you know, and obviously I was asked the question, do you want to terminate? Because when we I did an amniocentesis, when I found out it was genetic, and they did find out that he did have it. So, you know, I was given that option at the time because I guess it was still legal, but I don't think I'd be able to live with myself, because everything that's happened in my life was not technically my fault, you know what I mean. And so I didn't want to cause something, you know,

Scott Benner 47:09
Oh, that's interesting. You didn't want to be, you didn't want to be the decider on it, yeah,

Lauren 47:13
yeah, yeah. I mean, like, everything that's happened has not been something that I've chosen, you know what I mean. And so I understand if I were to choose, yeah,

Scott Benner 47:22
nothing, no, I completely understand. Yeah. I mean, it just, it bears asking, right? Like, no, yeah, you're not gonna have other children. Absolutely not. Yeah, no, you and your husband don't even sleep in the same room anymore, right? Just, just in case.

Lauren 47:36
No, they removed my tubes.

Scott Benner 47:38
Did you like, say I want to watch you throw them in the trash.

Lauren 47:41
Yeah, pretty much. And they the doctor still questioned me, like, Are you sure? What if this one doesn't survive? And I'm like, Okay, we're gonna take them out no matter what,

Scott Benner 47:51
am I sure? Are you out of your mind? Like,

Lauren 47:56
yeah, they don't understand the content. Like, like, you have more of an understanding just talking to you, and I can tell, than talking to any other medical professional. You know what I mean? Like? Because I feel like they just they don't. I don't

Scott Benner 48:09
know, listen, my brain works very simply. You just told me your kids can't sleep more than six hours without it being dangerous for them. One of the great joys of life is like going to bed late on a Friday night after working a full week and waking up whenever the hell you wake up on Saturday. Your kids are never going to do that. And that point is, is that they're going to be 18 and they're going to go to college, and then they're going to drink or something, and then you're it's going to happen like you're literally going to be on the phone going, someone's got to wake her up and give her something to eat like you don't need, like that's and that's not a thing you're going to forget about. And it's doesn't matter how old you get, it doesn't matter how long this goes on for. You're going to think about this every goddamn day for the rest of your life, and that's not fair to you. It's not fair to them, and it's brave to deal with it, but to not understand it from a third party perspective. Why you might not want to do it is predict. I mean, that's just silly. Like, yeah, please. Oh, my God, it is. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. Seriously, what the hell? Like, who would not understand that? Like, and, you know, the same thing with the diabetes stuff. When people say, like, look, I'm all for sitting around and speaking high mindedly about things and doing some like, gazitas and like, you know, being whimsical, and saying, oh, there's a ton of stuff that I've learned because my daughter has diabetes, and I am probably a smarter person and a stronger person and more resilient, and all that stuff because my kid has type one. It doesn't matter. I'd give it away. In a half a second, I'd go back to not understanding things and not having perspective and being less intelligent and all the other I'd give away the podcast. It wouldn't matter to me. Can all go I'd give it away for anything. And that's why that conversations makes people upset. When people say, hey, what's something you've learned from diabetes? And you'll hear. From people who say, Oh, like, you know, I'm, you know, I think I'm actually overall healthier because I pay more attention to my body. That's a very valid statement. And then somebody else will come in and be like, you're, you're out of your mind, like, there's nothing I wouldn't give away to get rid of this. And so I'm with you, like, I see how hard it's also why I decided to be jokey with you, because I didn't think we could make it through an hour of talking about this, because I'd be, I'd be like, half out the window crying right now, if we treated this too seriously. So I got the space for that. It's getting towards the end of the week, you know

Lauren 50:33
what I mean, Lauren, like, I'm

Scott Benner 50:36
trying to get the Saturday, you know? Yeah, I can't be walking around all day thinking about your kids not being able to sleep. To sleep more than six hours, and your other daughter, your other daughter, surviving a hit. I mean, Jesus Christ,

Unknown Speaker 50:48
it's like one thing after another. There's no

Scott Benner 50:51
way you guys are gonna have other bad stuff. Either you've used it all up already or you're just a target for it. I can't decide what's gonna happen. Your house is Never No No. You don't live in like a tornado part of the country or something.

Lauren 51:04
No, but we get hurricanes. We're in Florida, so the hell out of there

Scott Benner 51:09
right now. If I was you, you're clearly gonna find your ass on a raft floating out to sea one day. Oh, no, I knew it.

Lauren 51:18
If anything, hopefully we'll win the lottery, because we're just that, you know that are, that's our odds. I feel like,

Speaker 2 51:24
I swear, I always make that joke with people like you have these incredibly rare things that never works out with the lottery. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I know, right? Terrible, really, terrible. Oh, are you at least, really pretty Lauren, or something like that. Like, is there any like,

Lauren 51:39
No, I might not even have that go over

Scott Benner 51:43
something I could feel less. Are you six feet tall? You're like, a runway model? No, no, no. I mean something I can, like, at least go, oh, well, she got that. Are you driving, like, one of those Range Rover trucks or something I wish.

Unknown Speaker 51:56
No, I'm just normal.

Scott Benner 51:59
This is terrible. Do you find money on the ground ever?

Speaker 1 52:02
Oh, you know what I have before go ahead,

Scott Benner 52:06
enough to buy something or not. When

Lauren 52:09
I was living somewhere else, I actually found $100 in like, random bills all over the street. All right,

Scott Benner 52:16
I would like for that to happen to you every five hours. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 52:19
thank you.

Scott Benner 52:20
I think that's the way to go. Like, you know, like, when I have stuff bad, I always think, like, at least if I was tall, this would be acceptable.

Lauren 52:30
Yeah, if I was a supermodel, then maybe I can handle it better. I would

Scott Benner 52:33
prefer if my teeth were a little straighter. I feel like I could live with this easier. And like, you know, like, seriously, like, why? I don't know, yeah, it just some people are so goddamn handsome. Just like, that's gotta make up for something, doesn't it, right, money or something like, anything to just like, move this offset it a little bit back to the center, a little for me, for God's sakes,

Lauren 52:58
I know all the way on the edge. Like, come on now, listen

Scott Benner 53:00
your kids, they don't end up ejaculating to their bladder. Can they have children? Or they're not. I know he's like two. Sorry.

Speaker 1 53:10
No, they can't have well, they,

Lauren 53:13
I mean, there's not enough studies, but when they're taking that medication, apparently they, there's a possibility that they may be able to reproduce. So I don't know. I won't, I won't advise any of my children really to reproduce, because it scares the crap out of me. And so even

Scott Benner 53:32
your oldest that has type one, like, does she have the gene?

Lauren 53:36
She's a carrier. And so, like, she doesn't actually have the condition so she carries it. So the odds of her finding somebody who is also a carrier is like slim to none. But, you know, I the, you know, guess what? Anything could happen now, so, you know,

Scott Benner 53:54
unless she meets her third cousin somewhere, oh, God, I like how that shocks you more than the other thing that's fantastic. Do you like, put the all the word out to your entire family about this?

Lauren 54:06
I've tried, you know, it's just talking anything medical. Anybody tell me. I mean, you know how, if you try to explain diabetes to anybody on the street, and they're just kind of like, nodding their head and pretending like they're understanding, I feel like that's how the conversation goes. Yep,

Scott Benner 54:29
it's upsetting on a different isn't it upsetting on a different level, it is.

Lauren 54:33
Yeah. And my brother, who is also a carry this condition, is having a child, and we're getting his girlfriend tested to make sure that this child does not have the condition, or, I guess we're testing the mother to make sure she's not also a carrier.

Scott Benner 54:47
Jesus, so I'd never not ejaculate into a condom if I was in your family, even if I was by myself. What do you think of that? Like this ain't getting on anybody. Dang.

Lauren 55:03
Course, Yeah,

Scott Benner 55:04
no kidding. Thank God you came on the podcast somehow oddly, Lauren, this is the most fun I've had making the podcast. Thank

Lauren 55:18
you. Thank you for having me.

Scott Benner 55:19
Oh my god, are you and crazy. Thank you for coming on and shame on you for not doing it sooner.

Lauren 55:23
I tried.

Scott Benner 55:26
That's my fault. Yeah, fair enough. Although I did, I did record an episode. I found this great doctor, this endocrinologist in Texas, Blevins, and he's going to come on a number of times to talk about GLP medications. Okay? And so we're on yesterday, and we're recording together, and it's a, he's a nice man, and it's not, it's very it's serious, but it's not so dry. And at one point I brought up this like scenario where this person started using a GLP and lost five pounds in the first 36 hours. And I was like, could that be water weight? Like, black and forth, and he goes, I would imagine it would be a water weight or, like, maybe they experienced diarrhea or something like that, and like, we're talking about it. And I said, Yeah, but in fairness, this person's a very clean eater. They have PCOS, right? They're very clean eater, and they're gaining weight uncontrollably, very clean eater, exercising constantly, uncontrollably, gaining weight. This poor girl in her 20s, right? And I said, you know, never had a five pound loss for any reason. And they're in during this entire thing, they injected that GLP and lost five pounds. I was like, it's, you know, and then I think I said, No, whether that's because they exploded out there or not, is neither here nor there, in my opinion. And he kiss kind of giggled just a little bit. And I was like, Oh, I like this guy because, because, as I said it, I thought that's not what I should have said. But oddly enough, exploded from their is less creepy to me than the word diarrhea. Yeah, I agree. So I just rolled with it. I think I'm going to receive a Nobel Peace Prize one day for the conversation I had with you. I would like that to happen. I can I be serious for a second and at the same time say something really nice about myself? I think that this thing that your kids are going through, right and this experience you had with your daughter, seriously, they're two really important conversations, like blended together here with us today. Yes, these are not things that people would sit and listen to. It's too goddamn depressing. It's too obtuse. Nobody's going to have this happen to them. You know what? I mean, like, like, but it's, it's valuable to hear about. And I think maybe the biggest value is to hear, like, your reaction to it more than anything else as a podcast. Like, like, seriously, because there are plenty of people, plenty of people who would just leave. They'd just be, like, these kids are a problem. I gotta go, yeah. Like, like, right. And that's not what you're doing, and you've got their best interest at heart. You're working every day at it. It's obviously a 24/7 situation. You're aware that it's going to have detrimental effects on your health, and you don't care. You're going to take care of them still. Yes, yeah, that's the story to me. The joking around and the laughing part is so that I don't cry while we're talking about it, in case you're wondering, and I don't need you crying, because if you cry, I'm gonna cry. And then, you know what everybody's gonna do with their podcast player. They're gonna go dis depressing and they're gonna shut it off. Instead, we laugh the whole time, and yes, we have a cartoonish vision of me shooting glucagon with one hand and choking a one in their 60s with my other hand. So yeah, oh, my God. I honestly think I might ended up in jail.

Lauren 58:46
I know, right, yeah, someone come in here

Scott Benner 58:49
and give my kid glued gun while I murder this person. Like, just, what in the hell? You didn't say anything. Mean, no, oh, I would have been so incredibly mean. I'm disappointed in myself saying that

Lauren 59:01
I did. But, yeah, I don't. I'm not really that kind of person. I guess. I don't know if I I was just so, like, out of it, like I was in such shock. I think I, you know, it's just,

Scott Benner 59:14
I mean, listen, maybe I wouldn't, truth be told, it's possible I wouldn't, but in my heart, I kind of hope I don't think I'm that person. To be perfectly honest with you, people now are probably laughing going, oh my god, Scott, you're 100% that person. But I think I'd be shooting glucagon while yelling, you dumb mother and like, I think I would have said such horrible things to her, and I probably would have apologized afterwards, but I don't know how you stopped yourself. You were in shock, obviously,

Lauren 59:44
yeah, I was just like, not, I don't know. I was not present in my head. I guess I sometimes, like, you just have to, like, remove your brain. I don't know. Well, no,

Scott Benner 59:55
it sounds, it sounds like you, you. It took you a second, but then once you did it. You pulled it together and you started taking steps, right? Yeah, that's true. I would have been disappointed in myself, but I definitely would have cursed a lot and said is probably the most hurtful things I could think of. Yeah, I'll see a third Yeah. About that, maybe, but,

Lauren 1:00:12
but, yeah. Going back to the other conversation with my other two, I just want to mention that there's something called pots. I don't know if you heard of its Yeah. So, yeah, you know, they don't really know a whole lot about it. And this condition, the dbhd, of main beta hydroxyl, place efficiency, actually kind of mirrors it, in a way. And the researchers think that the dbhd may be a little bit more common, you know, then we know of because it's just so not really tested for so, you know, if anybody does have pots likes and you know, symptoms and medications are not helping them, and also, if they've been like, born, low birth weight or prematurely, then I would look, you know, I encourage you to look into that diagnosis, because, You know, there's potential for other people to be diagnosed with it as well. It's just not, you know, it's not researched and studied enough interesting.

Scott Benner 1:01:08
That's very interesting. I was speaking with a person who has pots recently, who also has a heart issue, like a medication for I wish I was paying enough attention at the time to remember the name of it, or I would share it with you, but it makes me wonder, like, yeah, POTS is one of those things. They're like, that's that ultra step. I can't I'm saying the word wrong when you stand up and you get very dizzy,

Lauren 1:01:28
exactly, yeah, orthostatic hypotension type syndromes, yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Scott Benner 1:01:33
All right, Lauren, is there anything that we haven't talked about today that you want to

Speaker 1 1:01:39
No, I believe we covered a lot of it. Yeah, I think that was, that was really good.

Scott Benner 1:01:43
Mm, hmm, yeah, okay, anything you want to say, you want to curse once, or anything like that, let it out

Lauren 1:01:54
a little bit sometimes. But yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:01:55
like how you blended the at the end there with, though you were, like, you were very strong with the mother. And then you, you kind of got a little, like, like, a little, like, a criminally there with the part that was nice, yeah, like, I felt like you could have stolen my car.

We're done some good voiceover work for children's cartoons over 18 years old. Thank

Lauren 1:02:16
you. Yeah, somebody needs to hire me now. Somebody

Scott Benner 1:02:18
needs to hire you. Listen to me. God bless you. You should find $100 on the ground every five hours. As I've just said, Someone should call you immediately and give you a job where you make $90 million a year. And some researchers should end up with, uh, whatever your kids have. So maybe they pay attention to it for five seconds. But for real, though, by the way, seriously, yeah, 30 people,

Lauren 1:02:40
30? Yep, yeah. Online, you can read it says between 25 and 30. So my kids are two of them.

Scott Benner 1:02:48
Holy shit. All right, yeah, listen, you're a saint. What do you think of that? If there is a heaven on a bumper sticker, if there's a heaven. You don't get into it. Something went wrong. Okay, you murdered 43 nuns, if that happens. Okay, holy hell, man, I don't know what. Hey, listen, I didn't want to ask because I was afraid I'd get a sad story. But is your husband? Like? Is Is he okay?

Lauren 1:03:18
Yeah, he's okay. Ask each other, are you okay? Like, every so often, so we just have continuous, like, rusting bitch face, I guess, oh,

Scott Benner 1:03:29
oh, are you kidding? 1,000,000% don't let the kids say it, though you gotta figure that out. Yeah, Jesus. You know, In what world, what family does the kid with type one run around going, Whoo, dodged a bullet. No kidding, I got lucky. Exactly you too. I can't believe you two met. Did you at least meet in a small town, or was it like a way at college or something like that? No,

Lauren 1:03:58
it wasn't a small town. Yeah, we were in middle school, and that's where we met initially, and then we we ended up getting together later on, when we were in our early 20s. So like,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:08
sixth, seventh grade,

Lauren 1:04:10
yeah, yeah, we were sixth grade, sixth grade, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:13
did you like, make, like, hold hands and stuff when you're in sixth

Lauren 1:04:16
grade? No, no, but we knew of each other, you know,

Scott Benner 1:04:20
yeah, yeah. He's like, I'm gonna get that lady pregnant a bunch of times one day, and it's gonna be all kinds of horror that comes afterwards. Also, children are a blessing, etc, and

Lauren 1:04:33
so, absolutely, absolutely,

Scott Benner 1:04:36
well, listen, I gotta tell you something. I have my last question for you. I know how you're gonna answer it, so it's almost silly to ask it, but I think it but I think it makes a good point, if you could get in a time machine and not have these kids, would you do that?

Lauren 1:04:47
I'm telling you, I think about this question daily. Go ahead, I really do. I can't say with 100% certainty, but I don't know if I could go through it all again, to be honest with you,

Scott Benner 1:04:58
I really don't if you went back. Back in time and you knew what was going to happen, you could stop yourself, right?

Lauren 1:05:05
Absolutely, yeah, it would be a completely different narrative if I knew what I know now, right? Absolutely,

Scott Benner 1:05:10
because you wouldn't know the kids. You just know the like, what like? Because I if I gave you a magic wand, you wouldn't make the kids disappear, right? Right? She's like, Yeah, no, of course not. What?

Lauren 1:05:21
Take away their take away the shitty part. Did

Scott Benner 1:05:24
I sound convincing when I said that? No, but, but seriously, I understand what you mean. You go back in time. You don't know the people, you just know the situation. Yeah, and you and so listen, I gotta be honest with you, I would do the same thing. Yeah, yeah. 100% now, if I took you back in time and showed you a picture of the three kids and had all the memories of loving them, and then said it, what happens then?

Lauren 1:05:46
I didn't know any better than Yeah, go for it. You know what I mean? Like, it's rough. If I could go back to 14 and tell her everything that went down by the time you're 30. Like, there's

Scott Benner 1:06:00
a little boy in sixth grade. He's gonna smile at you when he does, kick him in the balls as hard as you can and yell no, and then uppercut palm into his nose. Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:23
We might want to believe your name.

Scott Benner 1:06:28
All right, I need more people on the podcast being this honest, uh, send me an email. Okay. All right. All right, Lauren, let's let you go before one of us has a stroke from laughing and then or more people judge us for being terrible. People, whatever is going on right now. I know, listen, that's on them. Okay, never heard your tits been through a ringer. Your whole show gone through a couple of times. I think

Unknown Speaker 1:06:53
they pushed me through the whole thing

Scott Benner 1:06:54
barn. We would be friends if we were near each other, we really would be sure, no, we would definitely be friends. I would never, ever get you pregnant because you you were very dangerous, as far as I can tell. But we could definitely friends. Yes,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:11
oh my gosh,

Scott Benner 1:07:12
you must be the lady in the neighborhood that other ladies point to and go, Oh, don't worry. At least that didn't happen to us. Like you're like, oh, there's some out there that are still absolutely Lauren just said there are people in my town I wouldn't trade places with. That hurts if you're hearing it. No kidding. Are you a stand up comedian in your in your private life? What do you do for a

Lauren 1:07:39
living? No, I can't. I don't really have time to do anything.

Scott Benner 1:07:43
It's like your job. Is that, right? But no, yeah, so let me ask one last question. Have you always had, like, a in my estimation, you have a terrific sense of humor. Okay? I think sense of humor is measured by your ability to make fun of things that are clearly not funny, but you can say something funny about them. I mean, obviously nothing that has happened to you is fun, right? And so did you have this before all this? Have you always been like this? The sense of humor part,

Lauren 1:08:12
I think, a little bit, and I think I also had to kind of acquire it, because it's like, kind of like a coping mechanism, I guess, because if you know, if you don't laugh, you'll cry, yeah, you know, it

Scott Benner 1:08:24
is a little bit of a coping thing for you, but, yeah,

Lauren 1:08:26
yeah, no, I've always, I guess, yeah, but it is mostly coping. And

Scott Benner 1:08:34
maybe I don't usually do this while I'm being recorded, but Have I done anything that's made you uncomfortable? No, okay, not at all. Okay, because if you have been you could just tell me, I'll just delete it. You know that? Right? No, okay, oh yeah, of course, because there are going to be some people who don't have a good sense of humor, gonna be like that lady just took that for an hour and blah, blah, blah, like I hear you old hens out there. Don't you worry. I want to say this. I'm gonna say something, because there's no place I'd ever say this again on any episode when I was growing up. Like, between me and my friends, our measure of if you had a good sense of humor basically boiled down to, could you laugh at a very well crafted dead baby joke? Because that there's nothing funny about that. So like, if somebody could actually craft a piece of humor that would take something that horrible and still, your brain could go, Oh, I see why that's funny, huh? Like, like, and laugh like that. To me, is a pure sense of humor, because there are obviously plenty of things in the world that are not funny. It's not the thing you're laughing at. It's it's actually the structure of it, right? It's the Yeah, it's the conversation around it that makes it, that makes you laugh. It doesn't make you laugh at the horrible thing and it just makes you be able to laugh at the situation. Absolutely,

Lauren 1:09:44
yeah. I mean, could you imagine being that serious about like, I don't think I'd be here if I didn't have some kind of, you know, way of thinking otherwise, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:53
I think you'd be on six different pharmaceutical medications, right? Absolutely, yeah,

Lauren 1:09:57
totally, yeah. You have to, you have to. Well, you have to be able to laugh at yourself and laugh at the situation regardless of what it is, because if you don't, then you're just going to be miserable. You know, I

Scott Benner 1:10:07
think that attitude gives your children a very good chance at finding that for themselves too. So I applaud that, honestly. Okay, yeah, all right, well, that was weird to get serious at the end, but, all right, you want to curse anymore, Lauren, because you were really great at it okay? Because, I mean, if anybody needs to scream into a pillow, I feel like it might be you, so I'm gonna let you go. Yeah. All right. Hold on one second. All right.

Lauren 1:10:32
Thank you for having me a huge

Scott Benner 1:10:41
thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon. Find out more about gvokopen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash, juicebox. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juicebox. This episode of The juicebox podcast was sponsored by Dexcom. The Dexcom g7 is what you need. It's what my daughter wears, and you can learn more about it at dexcom.com/juicebox. Links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com, the diabetes variables series from the juicebox podcast goes over all the little things that affect your diabetes that you might not think about, travel and exercise to hydration and even trampolines. Juicebox podcast.com, go up in the menu and click on diabetes variables. Alright, kids, we're done. We're at the end. Just do me one last favor, if you can, if you could please, if you have the need or the desire for something that one of the sponsors is providing, please use my links or my offer codes. They help the show so much, and that means me, you're helping me to make this podcast every day. You're helping me to support the private Facebook group do all the things that I'm doing, I'm not asking you to buy something you don't want or something you don't need, but if you're going to get one of these items, use my links or my offer codes. They help me a ton. Thank you so much for listening and for supporting. I really do genuinely appreciate it. I'll be back very soon with another episode, the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrongwayrecording.com you.


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#1322 After Dark: Borderline

"Phoebe", a 50-year-old mother of five, discusses her family's experiences with type 1 diabetes and her husband's mental health issues.

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

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


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

Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, my friends, to the diabetes show that never ends.

We're back today with an after dark episode. Gonna be speaking with a person we're calling Phoebe. She is 50 years old, has five children, two of them have type one diabetes. Her 12 year old daughter was diagnosed at six, her other daughter at eight. We're going to talk about diabetes, some problems she's having within her family structure, and so much more. 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. If you're newly diagnosed, check out the bold beginnings series. Find it at juicebox podcast.com, up in the menu in the feature tab of the private Facebook group, or go into the audio app you're listening in right now and search for juicebox podcast. Bold beginnings, juicebox is one word. Juicebox podcast, bold beginnings. This series is perfect for newly diagnosed people. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order@cozyearth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40 percent@cozyearth.com you OmniPod.

Your kids mean everything to you, and you do anything for them, especially if they're at risk. So when it comes to type one diabetes screen, it like you mean it, because if even just one person in your family has type one, your child is up to 15 times more likely to get it, but just one blood test can help you spot it early, so don't wait. Talk to your doctor about screening tap now or visit screenfortypeone.com to get more info and screen it like you mean it. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour. Next.com/juicebox okay, I call you Phoebes. Or do you like Phoebe better?

Unknown Speaker 2:14
I like Phoebe's better.

Scott Benner 2:16
All right, Phoebe's, let's do it. You are just about 50 years old. You have two kids with type one diabetes. Let's get their ages rough, ages like teens, younger. Where are they at?

"Pheobe" 2:27
Of the diabetic children? Yeah, all of them. Now

Scott Benner 2:31
worry about those other kids. Let's talk about the kids with diabetes. Oh,

Speaker 1 2:35
the oldest one is 12, a girl since 2018

Scott Benner 2:40
2018, so diagnosed around nine years old. And what? No,

Speaker 1 2:43
no, six, 2018 she was diagnosed, wait,

Scott Benner 2:49
oh, my god, I forgot what year it was. Excuse me, that's 2024 pretty embarrassing. I was like, Oh, my time is slipping away. I'm sorry, at six years old, and then the other,

Speaker 1 2:59
the other is now eight, and she was diagnosed 2021 at age five, right? Right, before she turned five, right? I believe. And

Scott Benner 3:09
you have other children. Are they older or younger, or mixed?

Speaker 1 3:13
They are older. We have three teenagers, and our oldest, she's 19. She is diagnosed in with celiac in 2020 right before the covid shutdown, right within about two weeks of the covid shutdowns,

Scott Benner 3:27
what about other autoimmune in your family? Anything else besides the celiac?

Speaker 1 3:31
Well, we did not figure this out until our first diagnosis. I have a cousin with type one. I have two cousins was Hashimotos, and then on my husband's side, they didn't even know there's type one. And his mom didn't know that her dad had type one, and her sister has type one. She's still living but they were both diagnosed in their late like 30s and 40s. No kidding.

Scott Benner 3:57
Well, that's quite a pile, actually.

Speaker 1 4:01
It is yeah, and we I knew I had a cousin that had type one diabetes, but no one explained to me that our kids were at risk for it as just clueless. No idea took you by surprise. Yes, her diagnosis did. It was summer, very hot, humid, summer, and she just seemed sleepy and she didn't want to play so much, which was unusual. And we had just done a well visit about six weeks before, you know, everything showed fine at the well visit, and they actually said she needs to lose a few pounds. They told me, you know, she's six years old, and after a few weeks, I thought, wow, she's starting to lose some weight. That was easy. Yeah, he looks thinner. And then I was starting to put it together. I even made a Facebook post about our kids, because our son that's two years older than her, he was always hungry, wanting to eat, and I was kind of joking in the post, because. You got hungry and thirsty, because she's always thirsty. She's thirsty all the time. And it still did not click, until one evening, she drank a whole bottle of water. It was a 16 ounce bottle of water, and she looked at me and she said, Mom, I'm still thirsty. And then it was before bedtime, but you know how you start. I went on one of my mom groups. I said, I've got a kid, she's kind of tired, she's been thirsty, and everyone said, you have to get her to the emergency room right now. It's type one diabetes, and I we've got five kids, so I don't like to go into the hospital unless I have to. So my husband had chronic migraines, so we spent a lot of time in emergency rooms for all of that. So I hate, absolutely hate, but you have to be dying for me to take you to the hospital. So the pediatrician, I had a late afternoon appointment, and I packed up the car thinking we're going to go the beach after this appointment, because it's not going to be anything. I'm just being paranoid. So we see the pediatrician, they did a finger stick, and we knew nothing about diabetes. And the nurse that came in, she's, she said, it's 500 like, oh, okay,

Scott Benner 6:11
I didn't know what that meant. I gotta go. We're going to the beach, see, yeah,

Speaker 1 6:15
yes. And she said, Let me do another one. Like, okay. And she did another one, and in the five hundreds, and it, you know, it still did not occur to me. I had no idea what was going on. So the pediatrician, he comes in, he said, Are you here today? Because you thought maybe your daughter could have type one diabetes? And I said, Well, I don't think she really has it, but I just thought we better be safe and rule it. Yeah,

Scott Benner 6:38
these people on Facebook told me. And I was like, Oh, whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 6:42
Like, they're just overly concerned, because we would never have this in our family. And he looks at me, he said, You need to get her in the car right now, and you're going to the hospital, and you're not going to stop and you're not going to let her fall asleep in the car. And I said, Well, we were going to go to the beach and get something to eat. He says, No, you're not going to the beach, you're not stopping for food, you're going directly to the emergency room. I'm calling you get her there as soon as possible. So that's when I started to freak out. Because yeah, people me, my kid had diabetes, and my oldest kid, she had went in with me and her daughter for the appointment. Others, they're waiting out in the car, you know, for us to go to the beach, and I come in the car, all crying, and, you know, don't let her fall asleep. And she didn't have any idea what was going on. My oldest daughter did. She knew she was very calm. She's very level. She's not like me. She was very calm. But we got to the hospital, and this little girl of ours, she always hated needles. She was afraid of needles and everything. Up until that day we got her in the hospital, she did not cry at all, not for any of the IVs, the finger sticks, the shots, nothing. She just took it. It was amazing. She I think she knew she had been sick, because later I've talked to her about it, and she said she remembers laying on the floor being tingly and not feeling well, but she didn't know how to tell she. She didn't know what it was, yeah,

Scott Benner 8:17
how to communicate all that, right? Wow. She's probably just happy to feel better. Needles, needles or not, from the very beginning, your kids mean everything to you. That means you do anything for them, especially if they're at risk. So when it comes to type one diabetes screen, it like you mean it now up to 90% of type one diagnosis have no family history, but if you have a family history, you are up to 15 times more likely to develop type one. Screen it like you mean it, because type one diabetes can develop at any age, and once you get results, you can get prepared for your child's future. So screen it like you mean it type one starts long before there are symptoms, but one blood test could help you spot it early, before they need insulin, and could lower the risk of serious complications like diabetic ketoacidosis or DKA. Talk to your doctor about how to screen for type one diabetes, because the more you know, the more you can do. So don't wait, tap now or visit screened for type one.com to learn more. Again, that's screened for type one.com and screen it like you mean it the contour next gen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast, and it's entirely possible that it is less expensive in cash than you're paying right now for your meter through your insurance company. That's right. If you go to my link, contour, next.com/juicebox, you're going to find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, Rite, aid, Kroger. And Meyer, you could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips and meter than you would pay through my link for the contour next gen and contour next test strips in cash. What am I saying? My link may be cheaper out of your pocket than you're paying right now, even with your insurance, and I don't know what meter you have right now, I can't say that, but what I can say for sure is that the contour next gen meter is accurate. It is reliable, and it is the meter that we've been using for years. Contour next.com/juice box. And if you already have a contour meter and you're buying test strips, doing so through the juicebox podcast link will help to support the show,

Speaker 1 10:45
yeah, because someone is actually telling her what is going on. But she did get very sick by the time they were going to put her in the ICU, because she started vomiting, and they gave her the anti nausea medication, and she was vomiting for a long time, but that we've, you know, we got under control eventually. But where we live, there is, is not an endocrinologist at the hospital. Hasn't been since the we've had to go the hospital for some other things. So we did not have see an endocrinologist at all for hospital stay. Yeah, they sent us a diabetes educator and a nurse practitioner to get us set up for our training.

Scott Benner 11:29
How long after this diagnosis, does the next one happen? Well,

Speaker 1 11:33
that was August 24 2018 and then 2020 in late February. Our oldest was diagnosed with celiac

Scott Benner 11:45
about a year and a half later. And then, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 11:51
September of 2021 was the other type one. Wow. So it's within three years, three years all that happened, yes, and then the second one, because I was on high alert with the first one. We got five kids. I just knew, in my mind, I can't explain, I knew that she was going to get diabetes. I don't it sounds crazy, but I just knew she was going to get it. We did the trial net the two oldest, they did not want to do the trial net tests? Or yeah, the two oldest did not. The third oldest, he did it. He tested negative for trial net. Our youngest that was diagnosed in 2021 I think she tested for only two of the auto antibodies. But we switched. We went from our area. We traveled two hours away for all of our endocrinology now, they do a really good job where we're at now that was the first time we did not see an endocrinologist until two years after diagnosis. If that tells you anything about the area we live in,

Scott Benner 12:56
who were you seeing? Just the general practitioner. Yes, it

Speaker 1 13:00
was not a doctor, it was a nurse practitioner, nurse practitioner and a diabetes educator. Yes, and we had the first diagnosis. I didn't know they were a very bad fit for our family, because they put us on such a restricted diet for this child, who we now know also has Oppositional Defiant Disorder, so to put them on such a restricted diet, you know, five carbs or less for any snack, we had a huge Food Battle for probably three years of hers taking food without insulin. You know, I'd go out in the yard, there'd be wrappers everywhere, and then I'd go to the appointment. And her numbers were always her. ANC was always like, 7.6 and under. But they would pull up her chart, and he would say, what did she eat here? Why did she eat that I got so stressed out over the micromanaging us, and they would shame me. It was a personality conflict between me and the person, nurse practitioner, for some reason, she just didn't care for me. So anyway, we switched, and then we saw an endocrinologist for the first time, and he does a lot of research and a lot of medical studies. So when I went to him, I brought the trial, net study results, and he said, This child has a like, I think, of 80% chance of getting type one diabetes. She's going to have it in three years. And I think that was in like 2020 back to the youngest. I would do random finger sticks on her after because we took her out of the pool one day, and she was so angry and grumpy, I did a finger stick, and she was, I think, 44 and I thought, well, she's been playing in the pool, swimming, and then, you know, a few months later, she was out at church, and she had a pee accident. She was five at the time. She had never had that happen before, so I did a finger stick, and she was in the 200 So we kind of knew,

Scott Benner 15:02
yeah, just take her to your endo at that point, or to did you call?

Speaker 1 15:06
I call them, and I just let them know that we were watching for it, and they were okay with that. And we got five kids. Life is very busy. That's one good thing. I don't get to sit and worry too much about certain things, because it's just crazy.

Scott Benner 15:22
Too busy going, Yeah, well, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about management. So the first one has it for a couple years prior to the next one. How are you managing? Pumping needles? Do you have a CGM? What? What are you doing there?

Speaker 1 15:36
I think we did three months with only finger six. They did not put us on a Dexcom right away, so we she's diagnosed in August, and I think it was right around Thanksgiving, we got the Dexcom for her, and then I wanted to move to the insulin pump, because she's the one that takes food without insulin. And I wanted her on an insulin pump. I wanted the tea slim, because we tried different phones, people gave us phones and then the receiver, and it was always getting lost all the time. So I wanted the tea slim pump so it'd be connected to her. We could not lose that pump. And our provider, that's why we switched providers, actually, is she kept saying, No, you cannot have it until you get this child's diabetes under control, because she could see, you know, we were giving corrections during the day. I think we were doing they wanted what they wanted, only six boluses a day for her. So that means why that's just the way she wanted. The lady wanted it done was you've got too many boluses. I think we're around like eight to 12, because she would take food or not boluses, because they had me enter in every time I gave her an injection that was before the pump. I'm sorry. So they, they'd have me enter in on the receiver every time I gave her insulin. And they said, This is too much. You need to stop once you get down to six boluses a day you can get the insulin pump. So I finally left the practice because I just felt you would do better on an insulin pump. Okay,

Scott Benner 17:11
man, you kind of had to go find the the guidance that you were looking for.

Speaker 1 17:16
Yes, yeah, yes. And they never where I'm at. They've never shamed us or scolded us one time. They've been really good. Because the endocrinologist, he also has type one. He's on the same insulin pump, you know, in like, you know, I'll be in the appointment with him, and they'll say, Aren't you high right now? And he's like, Oh yes, I'm 200 and it's just very nice to have, you know, to be able to see he's an endocrinologist. He does research, and he does get high. He said he gets kind of stressed out during the day sometimes. And so it's, I think it's relatable for our kids to see he has the pump on him. Got it? Okay?

Scott Benner 17:54
I have two questions here. How do you find the podcast?

Speaker 1 17:57
I found it very quickly. Actually, I think I was still in the hospital, because for our first diagnosis, we homeschool our kids, and I was in a very large homeschooling group, and they were kind of following my story. That's where I got the information to go to the hospital. Yeah, and then someone, I don't know who it was that someone I knew, they told me about your podcast. Nice.

Scott Benner 18:19
Did it help you? And if so, how like, did you find it more of like a community support information like mix

Speaker 1 18:28
both. I'm a I'm a researcher, information person, any health issue we have going on. I've got a little ADHD brain. I, you know, the hyper focus on new things. So I was at that time with all the kids I have. I used to read all the time, but it's hard. I don't have the time to read. So I do listen to podcasts, so that fit perfectly. Gotcha to listen. And I listen. Mostly. I listen to the educational ones, and here and there I'll listen to the stories of people, but usually I like the parenting ones with the therapist. Oh, you like Erica, yes, yes, right? With our situation we're in. I love therapists and psychologists right now, so I'll listen to those and the parenting ones, and then I the Pro Tip series. I've listened to a lot of those. And the beginnings every listen to some of those on bolusing and that type of thing. It's

Scott Benner 19:26
been valuable for you. Yes, very

Speaker 1 19:28
I've, I've learned way more that way than any of our appointments we go to. And when we go with the two of them, we're there for two hours every three months. You know, between all the educators and everything, I think that has been the most helpful for me. Gotcha?

Scott Benner 19:44
Okay, great. It's just nice to know how it helps. Okay, let's pick through your the stuff that you sent me. You basically listed four ideas about things you might want to cover while we're talking caretaking for the caretaker, when there are multiple to caretake, that's. So tell me what you meant by that.

Speaker 1 20:01
Well, I know for health issues, we started out when we were first married and having kids, my husband has chronic migraines, so it kind of puts you in a single parenting mode of taking care of that person and then running the household.

Scott Benner 20:17
Tell me for a second, like, use a month as an example, a full 30 days. What do chronic migraines look like? Chronic

Speaker 1 20:24
migraine is, if you have more than 14 migraines a month, if you're taking aspirin or pain reliever for headache more than two days a week, you should see a neurologist, is basically the guideline. But if it's 14 or more that's considered chronic migraine. And

Scott Benner 20:43
these are crippling, I imagine, but How so, like, what? What's the impact on him? For

Speaker 1 20:48
him, they are not everyone is crippling, but we have done well before 2018 they did not have this specific medication. It's the CGRP antibody. It's a shot once a month shot. So before 2018 we were going to the emergency room at least once a month for his migraines, and it's crippling that he would get extreme vomiting, nausea, dehydration, so they would put him on a cocktail what

Scott Benner 21:22
is just an anti nausea and like other things?

Speaker 1 21:26
Yeah, yeah, it's reglan Benadryl and toradol, some type of it's a narcotic cocktail.

Scott Benner 21:35
So he's not really valuable during these episodes as a character,

Speaker 1 21:38
yeah? No. And usually back then, he would be sick for days, and I would just get to a point when he started saying he wanted to die, I would pack him up and go to the hospital. And you know, when we're waiting in the waiting room, a lot of times he would be in his underwear, he couldn't get his shoes on, or, you know, he would be laying on the floor in the waiting room. So it was not like for him, it's not like you got a headache and you're, you know, the commercials they show the lady with their she looks all pretty, and her hand is on her head.

Scott Benner 22:08
Do you have migraines? Like, this pretty woman, like, yeah, it doesn't look like that. No Phoebe.

Speaker 1 22:14
No people. I'd bring him in and everyone would look horrified, and they move out of his way because,

Scott Benner 22:19
yeah, because they thought, they thought you were bringing a crackhead in there. That's why, yes,

Speaker 1 22:23
they had no idea. But my two boys also got them as children and their abdominal migraines, where they would just vomit for a couple of days and then they'd be fine. So we had a lot going on back then. The boys have grown out of it. My husband, I think it was about two weeks before our first diabetes diagnosis, he started taking this shot, the AMO VIG shot, okay, and that has helped a lot, so they're a lot less violent. I think since then, we've only been to the hospital once or twice for a migraine. I see that's

Scott Benner 22:58
crazy. That's it. And how long has he been living like

Speaker 1 23:02
that, but since I met him in 1998 so when I first met him and we were dating, I and went to see my parents, and his dad called me one day. He said, We just wanted to let you know that has a migraine. And I'm like, Okay, I just thought it was a bad headache, and they said we called the ambulance to take him to the hospital. So I had no idea when we first met what all that entailed. Yeah,

Scott Benner 23:31
wow, and you still married him. Look at you. I

Speaker 1 23:35
know. Well, you know, back then I'm a eternal optimist and happy, positive person. I just figured you could work through anything. If you work hard enough, you can work through everything. And I, as you get older, you realize that that's not always the case. You're like,

Scott Benner 23:51
you're like, back then, I had optimism. Scott, what? What do you have today?

Speaker 1 23:56
Oh, I'm a little bit of a cynic. Now,

Scott Benner 23:59
just because things have been hard.

Speaker 1 24:03
Yes, we have had very hard road to home. I guess you could stay Yes, because that was like the end of the world. We thought the migraines as I stay at home with our children. We've moved all over the United States for his job. So I think from 2004 to 2012 we've had maybe nine different homes that we've lived in with all these kids moving around. Yeah, we've been in the same place since 2012

Scott Benner 24:33
How does he make out working? When, when the migraines come?

Speaker 1 24:38
Well, his job, where he works, is very good. It's a very odd schedule. It's not nine to five. Their clients come in around the clock, so he might be working weekends, nights or days. So since it kind of checkerboards the time, because most of the migraines are early morning, where the worst ones are like, you know, he'll wake up with it. But. With him sometimes going in later in the day, it helped him. You'd give him time to recover. And he's worked the same job since 2007 different locations, and there's a high need for what his work is. So I think that helps.

Scott Benner 25:14
And obviously you don't get a migraine while you're having sex, because you have five kids. So I assume that's his damn part.

Speaker 1 25:21
Although I have said after he does get them, there is such a thing as there are migraines triggered after sexual activity. So there is some people who get it afterwards, but he does not see any correlation. Oh, good, because

Scott Benner 25:35
that would be scary, because if you're like, you know what I mean, like, so then this part's gonna happen, and then I'm getting an addict. That's not usually how I usually how I like to think about this part. You know what

Speaker 1 25:44
I mean? Yes, and I just thought we were ordinary people, but people probably think we do a lot of that. Since we have five children, I just think we're very fertile. One of us is very fertile. I

Scott Benner 25:56
see I say you've had sex five times in the last 10 years, and every time you got a baby, I got

Speaker 1 26:01
you, yeah, that sounds right. You

Scott Benner 26:05
said one of the kids has odd what is that? Is it one of the kids with type one? Or no?

Speaker 1 26:10
Yes, the first one with type one, we did not know what it was, because before we found out about the diabetes, she'd get real angry, particularly with me, like kissing and just kind of off the wall. Did you say? Kissing? Kissing. Yes, you kiss me. Kiss.

Scott Benner 26:31
Oh my god, I left her at a grocery store. Okay, all right. So hold on, hey, honey, one of them hisses at me. We got four others. What do you think you just want to go to buckies and leave this one in the beef jerky section and get out of here. No, seriously hissing. Like, like, make me understand. Like, there's a an inconvenience, there's an argument. Like, how does what leads to that?

Speaker 1 26:53
Yes, I'd say stop doing that. And the response would be his scene, if she had hit, you know, so she was, she was just, I always called her a fireball from a toddler age, because she would get up on the table and when, you know, she'd hit her brother in the head with a troquey ball, she hit me in the head with a Trojan ball. She was just, she was very sweet. But she's also just off the chain sometimes. And then I was ready to talk to our pediatrician about a behavior issue, and my husband has always been very anti therapy, and he said, No, don't do it. They'll take her away or something. So that well, visit before her type one diagnosis. I didn't bring it up. And then we got the diabetes diagnosis, and I thought, Well, maybe it's her blood sugar. Maybe her blood sugar has been right causing her to behave that way for a long time, but we've kind of since then. We figured out it does not matter what her blood sugar is, and we've since then, we have done so much therapy. So for her, they say oppositional defiance disorder, odd ago, agoraphobia, selective mutism, is another one that she is dealing with anxiety, so

Scott Benner 28:09
hold on one second, odd, irritable moods, argumentative, defiant behavior, aggression, vindictiveness. That all sounds like that. Okay, and then what were the other two things? I'm sorry, selective

Speaker 1 28:20
mutism. What is that? Because when we are out in public, she does not talk to people. She hardly talks to anybody. She speaks to our neighbor, friends. You know people she's known for a long time, but if I take her out somewhere, she will just sit by my side, not speaking to anybody who are responding to most people unless she knows who

Scott Benner 28:47
they are, and that's an anxiety disorder.

Speaker 1 28:49
Yes, well, we're still, we're Yeah, we're still picking through it. We are waiting for her to have a psychological evaluation. A behavioral pediatrician told us these things, but there's a 14 month waiting list for a psychological exam for a child right now. Jesus,

Scott Benner 29:07
how many kids speak parcel tongue. I didn't realize all this. I don't know if I'm joking or not joking, but like, the hissing is like, must have scared the living crap out of you, right? It

Speaker 1 29:16
did. We had a lot of and after her diagnosis, I mean, I think she has a lot of anger. She does not know how to communicate her feelings. Is the same thing her dad. I think she's on track with her dad. He cannot communicate his emotions very well either. But sometimes she would say she wanted to kill me. She wanted to kill herself. This after the diabetes diagnosis, and it was we had a I had a very difficult time because I was the one dealing with her all the time. Sure, I'm the I Am the diabetes manager for both of them. I do 99% of it. Are

Scott Benner 29:50
you okay? What do you do for yourself?

Unknown Speaker 29:58
Oh, um, the. Give me a second.

Scott Benner 30:00
No, you're fine. Take your time.

Speaker 1 30:05
I will say, I appears to be okay, you know, because we were pretty active in the community. A lot of people know we're a family, because not many people have five kids anymore. So we were involved in a church I started running a few years ago. I go to the gym, do therapy. Now, I got a dog a couple years ago, a golden retriever. I walk her every day. I have a friend in the neighborhood. They have a golden retriever too. They have a play date almost every day. So I do get out. I do things. I'm not gonna lie. We are in a very difficult place. It's not just her situation. What my husband is dealing with is a very kind of dark to me, mental health disorder I did not know existed until two, almost two years ago.

Scott Benner 30:53
I'm sorry your husband has something going on that you have not mentioned so far. Yes, are you willing? Yes, you want to skip it, or you want to say it,

Speaker 1 31:01
I'll say it. That's why I am on here, because I don't Well younger people probably know, because my 19 year old says everyone younger than me knows mental health, but us older people don't know anything about it. So he way back, he would kind of get angry over what I thought were small things, and we just thought he had a bad temper, or he was very organized and didn't like things out of place, because I'm kind of ADHD. I tend to lose things, forget things. So we saw that early in our marriage, some but it would kind of blow over pretty quickly, and it was far and few between, right? Probably when our oldest was about 10, they started to have a little bit of a power struggle, struggle that she did not seem respectful to him, and he was have a hard time with her, because she should just be obedient all the time. And the fifth child, she was actually a surprise. We were not planning on having a fifth child, and after she was born, she was a baby. He just casually mentioned to me one day that he was thinking of killing himself, and that really freaked me out. I talked to a friend of mine that was a nurse practitioner, and she said, Well, do you want to inpatient him? And I said no, because he's very anti therapy, mental health treatment. So we did not, I didn't do anything. We just kind of wrote it out. And then it happened another time where he I saw him leave the house with a some things in hand, and he just acted strangely, but nothing happened from that. And then he started, if he'd get upset, he would just leave, like, drive off, and I would try to beg him to come back. You know, I need you home. We'll do better, that kind of thing. I'll be a better wife, better mom. Just come back home because I state I've been home, not working since 2004 he's our sole source of income. And then it started. More and more he would talk about he's been thinking of leaving, just leaving the family. And

Scott Benner 33:11
you said he left the house with stuff in hand, like, You mean, like, like a gun or something that hurt himself with or,

Speaker 1 33:17
yes, okay, yes. I didn't know what it was his work bag, and it was not usually he, if he's going, he was wearing shorts and sandals. He had hurt his back. We were waiting for him to have a back surgery. At that time, I followed him out to the car, and you know, he he's not a very emotional, like crying type, and he's like, I'm sorry. I love you. Tell the kids, I love them, then you drove off. And I and I knew in my heart, I knew he wasn't going to do anything that day, and he did not. But you know it was, it was concerning, but I didn't know what it was. And I think it was 2022 like that summer, I started seeing a therapist for me, because I just felt like I was doing everything wrong, like I wasn't a good enough wife, I wasn't a good enough mom. And someone recommended I read the book stop walking on eggshells. And when I read that book, the first part, there's my talks about borderline personality order disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. And there's nine traits that someone will have for I think it's border, borderline and narcissistic personality order. And I cried through that whole list because I picked out at least five or six for him. And then the book says, Don't tell them that they have it, because it's such a difficult thing for them to deal with. They don't know how to deal with emotions. Basically, it's a big fear of abandonment. So when he was saying he was going to leave, you know he feels he's worried that we're going to leave him so he's going to leave us before we can leave him. If that makes sense, that's where a lot of that abandonment is. Thing comes from, I did not tell him, but you're supposed to stop caretaking. I'm a big caretaker. I will make you nice meals and do everything for you and set up all your doctor appointments and completely make you feel good and well taken care of. But that is what I needed to stop doing. That's what. You can't do it all. They have to do things for themselves and their own mental health. So I, I don't know what made it come to a head, but one night he he woke me up. We have firearms in our house, and he had loaded a weapon in our bedroom, and was, you know, ready to, you know, take his life. So I said, Well, I think you have this. I read about this, and, you know, he kind of calmed down because he's was saying that he just cannot get all these things out of his head that he's thinking, yeah. And so I said, I think you've got this. I read the list to him, and he said this, yes, this does sound kind of right. And this is about, almost. It'll be two years in October. So we went through the list, and I was thinking in my mind that remember earlier I said, if you work hard enough, you can get through everything. I figured that he now he knew this little bit that he would just be like me and pick it up and run with it, but he didn't, he want, doesn't want therapy and all of that stuff. So that's kind of where we have been almost two years, of him going in this circle again, of not this stuff happens over and over again, and I'm doing more for myself without

Scott Benner 36:35
getting help. It's not going to end obviously, no. And

Speaker 1 36:38
if you if you were to read up on it, it's not a medication thing. Bipolar Disorder, my understanding, is more of a chemical imbalance, and they can give medication the personality disorders. It's your personality that needs to change. So what they want is it's something called dialectical behavior therapy, DBT therapy. And if you were to aggressively go at it, you would be at a therapy, doing therapy twice a week, taking DBT classes and always working on this. I think it's a two year course of once to twice a week therapy classes for two years. He knows this exists. Yeah, he told I've talked to them since then, we visited a couple different therapists for this. You want someone that is older, you know, that's been in practice for a long time, does the DBT therapy? And he's had a couple tell him. They just tell him he has the traits. They'll call it a spectrum. And I think the narcissistic personality disorder, they don't think they like to tell people they have that.

Scott Benner 37:47
So you think that the that therapy would help him, but he doesn't. He's not willing to do it.

Speaker 1 37:53
It can help him. I mean, you can go to therapy, but you have to put work into it, you know,

Scott Benner 37:58
yeah. I mean, I'm assuming he goes and does what he needs to do. You think it would help him, but he's not interested. In doing it. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 38:04
Yes, he's gone a handful of times since we figured it out, and we've had a lot of things go down in our house since that one night I told you about have to draw a line in the sand, as we have to do this therapy, you know, for us to stay together. So he, he did have one appointment a couple weeks ago, and then he said he couldn't get in until the middle of June, but he only scheduled two more appointments. You know, he would really need to be getting, you know, let's fill up her calendar the year, yeah, and knock it all out. So I don't know if I'm not really sure that. And when I set up to be on the podcast, I picked the farthest date possible, which is now, because I was hoping I'd have more of a better idea what direction we're going, but nothing I don't know. No, it is a little more definitive, because we're at the kind of the point whether we have to figure out if we're going to stay together. Stay together or not, because it's strongly affecting our all of our children, sure, not just the diabetic children, because they see things and hear things that they should not be seeing and hearing, but because I am a root Christian homeschool family, you know, we're supposed to be all

Scott Benner 39:18
good, not going the way you expected.

Speaker 1 39:20
No, it is not at all how I expected. I'm actually looking into perhaps working full time in the fall and putting my children all in public school, but the ones that are still in school

Scott Benner 39:32
because you're trying to become more self sufficient, because you think this can't go on. Yeah,

Speaker 1 39:38
yes, yes. And sadly, I mean, our home environment is not pleasant with all this going on. My two older boys said that they actually I thought I just last night, I talked to them about maybe going to public school, and they seem okay with it. The one said, I'd rather be there than at home all the time. And I mean, we do. Things. He works with both my my oldest son is 17, so he has a job, a part time job, and they have friends, and they have activities, but he just, you know, he's ready. I think he wants to try something different. And the the older boys are fine. My eight and 12 year old are not. But we're working on that?

Scott Benner 40:21
No, of course. I mean, it's obviously encompassing and difficult and a lot to consider, but I think you're thinking about it correctly, about separating the kids from it

Unknown Speaker 40:31
honestly.

Scott Benner 40:32
You know what? I mean? Like, it's just, it's, I mean, it's too much to to go through as a kid, and the repercussions from that are going to be. Have you heard of the aces, the 10 aces of trauma? I have not okay, so they're going to come up in a NEP in a series about resilience with Erica that's going to come out pretty soon, but, but basically, there's these 10 childhood experiences that have the potential to change like the course of your life, right? And they are physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, mental illness. And what that means is a household member with a mental illness that impacts their ability to provide proper care for the child. This has a profound impact on the child. The experience could be depression, a household member attempting suicide, or other mental illness. The seventh thing on the list is substance abuse. So alcohol or drinking in the household,

Speaker 1 41:30
we don't have that. That's the one thing we got going for us,

Scott Benner 41:34
imprisonment. Somebody in the household has been incarcerated, witnessing abuse, and then, has somebody witnessed abuse?

Speaker 1 41:43
We don't have any physical abuse, but it, from what I have read, we've got emotional, verbal, financial and spiritual. I know I don't think you are a Christian, but you know, if I'm told I'm not being a biblical wife for certain things.

Scott Benner 42:01
Oh, you, you get shamed through religion, yeah,

Speaker 1 42:05
yes, and I am a Christian. I Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I know that, but that does not mean I need to be perfect in all things. Because, you know, things will happen. You know, he said he's, you know, pulls the attic door down, we can hear it, and gets his bags and throws him down. I'm packing up, I'm leaving. They'll hear that in my little one, the teenagers, they can I know they care, but they act like they don't care, like he's just trying to get attention. But my eight year old, she will cry her little heart out because her daddy is

Scott Benner 42:39
well. So my bigger point here is not that that's not horrifying. I'm sorry, the 10 thing on the list is losing a parent to separation, divorce or death. But you know, how many of these Did you? Can you count on your fingers when I read physical abuse,

Speaker 1 42:52
not physical we've got a verbal, emotional, mental health disorder, attempted suicide. We've had several times. I did have to call the authorities in December The kids also, I'm leaving the house for that, but he was not arrested, and the separation, that is a big topic in our family right now that we're trying to I'm trying to decide which way to go, because, like I said, I've been at home with the children. I have a college degree, but when you don't work for 18 or 19 years, that does not mean very much. Yes,

Scott Benner 43:24
listen, Phoebe, if it makes you feel any better, I I have a fairly successful business, and a lot of people listen to my podcast. I don't think I could get a job. So, like, I think I if I went out the working world, they'd be like, you're a what now? And I'd be like, yeah, no, I've been a podcaster and a stay at home dad. They'd like, yeah, no. Thank you. Listen. The reason I bring up the ACE is because these adverse childhood experiences are indicators for problems your kids are going to have in the future. But it's not a set in stone thing, and so while I have never once advocated for the disillusion of somebody's like family, I do think that if you remove your kids from that situation, that gives them a better chance to not find themselves in that situation as adults. And then it makes me wonder, of that list that I read to you, do you think, how many of those things do you think your husband grew

Speaker 1 44:13
up with? He had both parents growing up? So I don't really unders. I don't know, but I think there is parts of it. I think the difference is, I think his mom just went in and line and kept him happy, and that kept the home better for the kids. I think that it was, it was there, the same, the mental.

Scott Benner 44:34
Think the father in law has it too, and the mother in law just put her head down and made it all go away as best you could.

Speaker 1 44:41
Yes, codependency, because that's what I would do. I would just try to keep the peace. I don't like conflict, so I just tried to appease him. And then at some point there was like a switch, you know, because he he called, he was out driving around, and he says, I'm gonna take this job in another state and start over. And I. Okay, because I was at home and our all of our kids were little, and I wanted to be home with our babies, I would beg for him to come back. And then I one day, I'm like, why am i This is so humiliating. I should not have to I'm not that bad of a person that I need to beg my husband. Well,

Scott Benner 45:15
first of all, let's say this. You're not a bad person at all like so it's probably hard, from your perspective to see it, but you're describing like a show in 17 different directions, and not a thing that you or anybody else should have to deal with and listen respect to the fact that he has obvious issues, and we'd like to see him get helped, if it's not possible for him to be helped, and hope for a resolution, then you have to ask yourself, like, Well, how long do I let my kids sit around this fire burning at their feet when he's not trying to put it out and you can't, maybe you can't blame him for that, which is fine. Like, maybe it's, maybe he's so far down, you know, a direction that it's not something he can break free on his own. Like, also, no, there's, you know, no disrespect about that. If you have a mental illness, you're probably not the best one to help yourself out of it. But no, at some point, like you're not, you're not describing anything joyful, you're not describing anything fulfilling. You know, it's a one way relationship. It basically feels like you've described, there's this guy that lives in my house, and he puts money in a pile. And so here's all the things he does when we just try to ignore him the best we can, because there's money coming. Is that right at this point? I'm sorry,

Speaker 1 46:40
it is. And he, I think he can tell somehow he is able to keep working. And I did. I mean, we, I'm not gonna, I mean, we had a very enjoy. Obviously, he was not like this when I married. Of course, you know, we had a lot of good times. We've lived in a lot of neat places, and I think my understanding is with a disorder, especially as the kids get older, you know, they feel like they you know, for me, I could keep, kind of keep the peace by doing things the way he liked it. But you have more kids, they start getting older, they talk back a little, they get their own mindset, and they don't agree with everything he does. And then we have a kid, one kid was type one diabetes, and then all of a sudden, my attention is pretty much off of him, you know, because I'm trying to figure out diabetes, yeah, and manage this. And then then 18 months later, there's celiac okay? We have to learn how to do all the gluten free right stuff, and we're doing diabetes. It just took all the attention off of

Scott Benner 47:38
him. Oh, no, yeah, you were basically your job was to throw the dragon meat so it didn't burn everybody. And then you got distracted with other more important things, and now suddenly you can really see what happens to him if you're not placating his and basically petting him and telling him to stay calm. Yes, yeah. No, no, listen, this is obviously difficult, but I mean, so tell me something like, Do you have a plan?

Speaker 1 48:05
I'm working on, on a plan, and it's kind of, it's not funny, but it is. You know, we lived here long enough I've known I've gotten to know enough ladies, and that's another reason why I wanted to talk about this, because there are so many people I know, three or four personal friends, that I've had a long time living very similar situations, and I had no idea until about two years ago. I just, I don't tell everybody. A lot of people know what I am dealing with now our church knows I've talked to them. My neighbors know I've got safe places to go, like three different houses in the neighborhood to go to, and my kids know where to go. I'm working with a domestic abuse advocate right now. Yeah, that kind of pushes me to do more than what I would want to do. At my church, I have some friends that are law enforcement. He's former US Marshal and SWAT team, so he you know, so I have people I can talk to. And the thing I'm really battling is with myself, because I know I'm going to have to make a decision, and I've kind of kicked the can down the road because I don't want to make the decision. I don't, I understand he's not going to be the one who can think clearly and do it. So I, you know, right, if it comes that we need to separate, it'll be me having to make the call, and I will look like the bad person to the children and everybody. Well, you

Scott Benner 49:38
know, listen, that sounds like it might be inevitable, because your luck is terrible. Like, I mean, honestly, like, as you described this whole life, people, here's something people don't know you went to your church to find quiet to record, because you like, my house is going to be too loud. And then I and then then a smoke. Detector and like, a fire alarm went off while you were there. Like, does it must? You must be like, God, nothing goes right for me. Like, like, that's exactly what I thought when that went off. I'm like, this poor lady. I mean, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 50:15
No, that. That is my life in a nutshell. And I look, I left my keys inside. I hope I'll be able to find them. Yes, no, my life. People that hear my life, they just, yeah,

Scott Benner 50:27
no. It's that old adage. It feels like, it feels like, if I wrote this as a movie, people would be like, Oh, it's too over the top. I can't believe all this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 50:36
You know it is. We have dealt with a lot. Yes, they got me locked out of the building, but smoke detector went off. But I'll just hang out by my car. I'll go back later and get my car keys. You're gonna be able to get in. Are you sure? Yes, they have a they have a doorbell. I was gonna

Scott Benner 50:54
say, we've just ringed the bell like Jesus opens the door or something like that. Is that how it works? There's our guy that works there. I guess maybe. Secretary, yes, Secretary, I'm sorry. Don't be sorry. You don't mean to what.

Unknown Speaker 51:11
I don't cause trouble.

Scott Benner 51:13
Please. First of all, don't apologize to me. You didn't do anything wrong, to be perfectly honest with you, I think it's I think it's good. I think it puts a an exclamation point on your story. Honestly, like just everything at this moment seems hard. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 51:30
Yes, everything, everything is hard. So and I will, I The other thing, I want to encourage people, because I did not have any friends in our neighborhood until covid He hit because we started walking. The kids were older. I started walking. I started running and meeting people. And for a while, there were actually a group of people that would come in our front yard every afternoon we put out the chairs, and there'd be a bunch of people sitting in our neighbors coming to talk to us, because there's nothing to do during covid, right? So I met a friend in our neighborhood that was like, 18 years older than me, married, has a dog. The kids like playing with his dog, and just by talking to, I hate to use the word normal people, but emotionally healthy people, it really showed what was going on in my life. And I don't if that hadn't happened, I don't know if I would have seen it. I think it would have taken me longer to see it, because I don't know how to describe it here. You know, just a healthy, emotional person that, you know, I didn't get upset over little things all the time. And,

Scott Benner 52:49
yeah, normal. The word, the word you're looking for, is normal. Like, like, I think it's possible you have been in this for so long, I don't think you recognize how strange it is no

Speaker 1 53:04
no, because my parents would come from across the country that we'd see them once a year, and they would buy things for the house, and my husband would get really upset and disrespected and make me return stuff. I you know, if they the only way they could get gifts for us was, you know, they come visit, and we'd go shopping while he was at work, and he might not notice that they bought the kids a bunch of underwear and shoes and things. Yeah, it's because I'd have to kind of keep it on the down low that someone's buying stuff for for us. I'm

Scott Benner 53:34
gonna say something that I can't be sure of. But if you pack those kids up right now and left, and I don't know what your situation is, financially or, like, I know there's a lot to consider, right? But you've, you've also, you know, you've just, you've talked about a lot of disorder in the house. There's firearms, there people threatening to kill themselves, you know, these power moves on you about, I'm leaving, like, that's just to keep you in line. You know what? I mean, that stuff and like all this is going on, and I can't be certain of this. There's a large part of me that thinks that if you broke free of this and got yourself reestablished somewhere else and got some time away from it, that a year or two from now, you'd look back on this story and think, I can't believe I didn't see this completely for what it was like, because this is horrifying, and you're laughing through it like, and I know probably laughing to not cry, but like, but I genuinely don't know that you know how bad this is. Now

Speaker 1 54:35
the description, because I I read, I listen to a lot of podcasts and things. And the description is, like, you are, you know, you put the frog in the cold water and you slowly heat it up, and you don't even know. You don't

Scott Benner 54:47
know you're boiling alive, yeah, you have no idea right now. Like, like, there's your description makes me feel like a SWAT team should drop in that house and extricate you. Like, like, I'm not, I'm not even joking. I'm worried what happens. If you tell him you're leaving, or if you ask him to leave, yes,

Speaker 1 55:03
I just had that conversation with a friend last night, because this is all it's been kind of coming, yeah, to a head What? What he does now is he just stays away as much as possible and come to him after we are sleeping, and I wanted to talk, we're gonna say, you know, you need. We're actually meeting with our church pastor tomorrow. My husband called him to talk about this. I don't know what he wants to accomplish, but it's kind of coming to a head right now. And my friend, she said, Well, you need. Where were you gonna go? And I was gonna go the ponds across our road, you know. And she's like, No, no, you need to go somewhere public. And I was trying to set up a meeting with him, and he says, No, I'm not doing that. I'm just gonna come home after you guys are asleep tonight. Yeah.

Scott Benner 55:53
I mean, listen, you might need, you might need a cop, a priest and three other like armed guards, to have this conversation. Let me ask you a question. What does better look like to you? Like? What has to happen for you to stay with him and be happy and fulfilled

Speaker 1 56:14
like you said? I don't even know. It's possible what my plan was, or what my hope was when we figured it out was he would do all this treatment. I we've had a in the last month. He I've finally gotten to go to a psychiatrist, and they wanted medication for the depression. He was not doing that. I wanted regular therapy sessions. He's not doing that. He has an appointment in June 15. I don't know if they're going to put it all in the books, but I don't think he can do it. So I would just need to see that he is being proactive in the all this wild stuff to simmer down, because we just, we had a horrible weekend, just, just all kinds of things going on, but I don't think we can get packed in. Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:01
none of that's going to change. Like, your life is like, living you're living inside of a tornado, inside of a hailstorm, and so, like, like, the oh, this weekend was tough. Or that's always going to be like that. And I'm not even telling you, like your kids have some issues too. You might move away and be like, This is not good. It's just better and more possible for you to focus on what's happening. Listen, you're 50. How long have you been married?

Speaker 1 57:28
We just had our 23rd wedding anniversary,

Scott Benner 57:31
a couple. So you got married. You were what, 27 when you got married?

Speaker 1 57:36
Yes, we met. I think I was 23 when we met just right out of college. Okay,

Scott Benner 57:43
that's my point. How many serious adult relationships did you have before this person?

Unknown Speaker 57:47
The very this

Scott Benner 57:48
was the very first one. You do not even know how you're supposed to be treated.

Speaker 1 57:53
No, I cannot even fathom what a good I mean, my parents were together. My dad is just he's our friends. Everyone just loves him. He's so good to my mom, and that's what blows me away, is how I even got,

Scott Benner 58:08
yeah, well, that ship sailed, but like, but listen, I'm just going to tell you that if, if I did one of the things that you listed, my wife would beat me up, bounce the head, throw me right out the front door and lock the door. If I did all of them, she'd shoot me and then tell the judge what I did and go, I thought it was okay. Seriously, like there's no world where you should be treated like this. No, and

Speaker 1 58:30
it doesn't start. All this radical stuff was not going on early. Early on, it was, hey, you lost the remote control. I need it right now. You know,

Scott Benner 58:43
he's right. His thing's gotten worse, and it's ramped up, but it's always been there to some degree or a level, right? Like you've like, when you stop and look back, like, has there ever been a time where if you did something quote, unquote wrong, you weren't told you weren't being a good Christian? Or some, I'm sorry to say this, but some like that, some controlling decision, like, I'll make a power move, I'll leave. You're begging him, like, like, really think about how he's treating you. You're the one begging him not to go. Well, you know what I mean? Yes,

Speaker 1 59:13
good, right? Yes, I, I will say, you know, I had, you know, pretty low confidence. I had not been in a relationship before. So and then, when you have a bunch of small children, you know, babies at home, not, you know, not working, it is scary to think you know he's going to leave. I've got all you know, these four. It didn't get like that until we had four at home, and I think we had just had, is after the last one. So we had five kids within 11 years time. So we had five kids, 11 years old and under, yeah, with me seeing no real way for me to support them. And that's the other thing. You know, he. You will sometimes say, if you leave, I will quit my job, you know, so you won't have the, you know, even there's the fear you might not even have child support.

Scott Benner 1:00:11
I don't know how to say this, like, like, politely, so let me just talk right around it. I mean, are you wealthy?

Speaker 1 1:00:18
No, we're not wealthy. We've got five kids, you know, high medical needs. We're middle class, okay, maybe lower ish, middle class. You

Scott Benner 1:00:27
don't have to tell me this, but you told me so much else, I can't imagine. You'll say, No, well, how much the money is he bringing in a year?

Speaker 1 1:00:33
Probably about 160 about 100,000 about 150 150 $160,000

Scott Benner 1:00:40
okay, well, listen, if you get divorced, he gets to keep some of it too. So you're looking at like existing off of, you know, I'm gonna guess, about $80,000 you and those five kids. And, you know, you can get a job, certainly, and take some of that money. And you might have to you might have to lean on social services of some kind to help make the rest of it up, but I think that gives your kids the best possible chance at a reasonable adult life. Because I hate to say this if you be like and I'm sure you can pull yourself around and have some happiness in your life, but I think your main focus has got to be on trying to save the kids from this happening to them, like, I don't, I mean, because you're not fixing this relationship, like, it's not like he didn't make a conscious decision to act like this. This is, I mean, this has crossed wires in his head. You know what? I mean, yes, like, and you're not gonna, you're not gonna rewire that today. And even if he pulls himself together, it could take him a decade or more to help to get that together, and by then, you're gonna have five kids who look more like Him or you, meaning either they're gonna come off like he does, or they're gonna be getting taken advantage of like you do. You're only gonna create one or two different kinds of people in this relationship right now. It's going to be people who get taken advantage of and are told they're not any good like, you have maybe a half a dozen times in the last hour referred to yourself as not a good person. Somehow, like, I don't, I can't even understand that. And so, like, think about your daughter. Do you want your daughter to be with a guy that treats her like this? No, no, but she's seeing you treated like this, and she's gonna think that's what's normal, yes,

Speaker 1 1:02:26
yeah, and I, I had therapy last week, and she it's a secular organization, and she told me at the end, she said, I prayed before seeing you, she said, before I asked her a question, and she said, You need to think about your kids. Your first job right now is to protect your children. Yeah, I agree. So this morning, we live right there's a elementary school right in our neighborhood. My youngest, she's going into third grade. So this morning, I did apply for three different jobs to work in the school system that, you know, it has benefits. Summer's off, school breaks off, and then I'm gonna, I don't know if I can say the company names, but I'm also gonna apply for, you know, Dexcom and tandem diabetes to see if I can do it, customer support work. I know a lot of them work from home, because you call them and you can hear kids and animals in the back, and you can

Scott Benner 1:03:25
hear the prices right while they're telling you about your stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. Listen, those are great ideas you have to and I listen, I shudder to give somebody advice, like I really people are probably laughing, but I don't, I don't want you to do something that I think is right. I've only known you for an hour, but I mean, from what you've described, I don't see the downside of you extricating yourself and your kids from this situation. Like, I mean, you, it's not like you've once said, Listen, I have a deep, like, love affair with this man, and it's breaking my heart that this is how he is, like you're saying, like, you know, we're already talking about getting separated, like, you know, like it's not even that, like you're just, from my perspective, you are so beaten down I don't even think you know where you are supposed to be, and I Don't. And I wonder if getting away from it, like, I mean, it's not going to be easy. I don't want to, like joke with you and say, oh, you know, just getting away is going to fix it. That's going to be a step. And there's probably going to be a moment in the first six months afterwards where you feel completely alone and you think, I did the wrong thing. I got to go back. I need help. But those are the moments when you have to realize he is not actually helping you with anything except for money, and this, then the state you live in can compel him to do that. So you know what? I mean,

Speaker 1 1:04:50
it's a lot of here. Well, I know it's not enough to support the the two families. So that is my step ahead. I've I'm starting to save a little. Money. I've got my advocate I'm working with. I'm I'm the type of person I need some type of plan. So that's why I'm applying for some jobs. You know, we've got summer talking about getting the kids in school. So if you look at the domestic abuse side of it, the advocate I'm working with, and I'm in some support groups. There's a lot of people that live with this. Have no idea. No,

Scott Benner 1:05:25
that's the thing that's making me the saddest is I'm thinking, I'm having this conversation with you, and I'm like, Oh, my God, this is crazy. And a lot of people are probably like, this is Tuesday for me. So you know, like, I believe that there's people who are going to be able to help you get through it. They could also probably, I don't know if you have as a family, if you have savings, I they could probably talk to you about how to make sure that you know when you tell him you're leaving or he's getting out, that he can't go empty your accounts and things like that. Like there's ways to get ahead of that stuff too. Yes,

Speaker 1 1:05:56
yeah. Well, that's the part I'm working on. So it looks, it looks kind of small, but the people who know where I've started, they've said it in the last year, I've made huge progress. You know, it's kind of a small way to go. I'm

Scott Benner 1:06:12
very impressed. I'm very, very impressed with with how you're handling this. If you, if you want to know the truth, I can't, seriously, I can't imagine you didn't just like, like, he's like, I'm leaving. I would have been like, Oh yeah, you buddy, I'm leaving. How about I'll brace you to the car. How's that sound? But like you're not doing that. You're not you got your eye on your kids. You're making smart decisions. You're talking to people to make sure you're not making rash decisions. I'm very impressed with how you're handling this seriously. Well, I

Speaker 1 1:06:41
think you need to exhaust all of the avenues, and that is what I'm trying to do, because it is a thing. Feels like you've done it, by the way. Yes, well, we have the sense of, I'll be back here tomorrow with this appointment. I don't know what the purpose of it is, but we'll go through it, and then we'll go from there. I'm just not ready to take the jump yet, but I have people that are willing to help, and I'd like to stay here. We've lived here for 12 years. Our kids know this is their home. They work here. They've got friends here. Yeah, amazing neighborhood. So that's what I'm trying to work out, is if I there's a way we can stay. Also,

Scott Benner 1:07:22
have you considered, what would any of the kids say? I'm staying with dad? Well,

Speaker 1 1:07:27
that is my concern, because the two youngest are the ones with type one diabetes, and he lavishes attention on them, taking them out to eat and buying them things and doing fun things, because he'll say mom and the teenagers, they don't like me and stuff like that, so they are very attached to him, and that is part of the

Scott Benner 1:07:49
oh, he's doing to them. What he's did to you?

Speaker 1 1:07:53
Yeah, he's good. He's very good to the those two girls, and he's

Scott Benner 1:07:56
grooming them, yeah, to be his fans, yes.

Speaker 1 1:07:59
But they also have the diabetes, which he does not manage, and that was kind of the tipping point we had a few weeks ago. They I was I just left home a few minutes ago, and our 12 year old, her infusion set fell off, and I was driving out of the neighborhood, and he's called, and I said, Can you do it? I will come back if you cannot do it, because he does, you know, if the alarms are going off in the night and he's awake, he'll wake me up to go do this stuff. So he says, Yes, I can do it. But then they got in an argument. She didn't like her attitude or something. She called me. The other kids got into it that they're two teenagers at home, they started arguing with him because they didn't like how he was treating the 12 year old. I got the two teenagers to leave and come to me. She wanted to stay with him because she loves daddy, and then she calls me, and she's never put an infusion set on all by herself. She's 12. You're going to start teaching her this year to do it right? I had to FaceTime her how to put it on, because he would not put it on for her. He was so upset. And while I'm putting that set on her, she's on FaceTime, and I can hear him in the background talking about how he's leaving. He's done, he's packing. He's leaving

Scott Benner 1:09:14
because of her attitude around an infusion set change.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:19
Yes, I think she was rough.

Scott Benner 1:09:23
Let me jump in here. I'm sorry. This is indelicate for people listening, and I am not I am not unfeeling for people with mental health disorders, but he's out of his mind, and you have to get away from him.

Speaker 1 1:09:35
That's what I'm thinking. This isn't her first time doing this by herself, and I don't know if she'll remember it, but this is what she has in the background. Is her dad talking about leaving her over something that started over the set.

Scott Benner 1:09:48
Oh yeah, this is, this is the beginning of a of a backslide for her that you won't even recognize till she's in her 30s. Like I'm saying, like the small things that happen to us day by day. Take forever to build up and turn into a good thing or a bad thing, and you'll never know what they were when you look back on them, but they are, for certain, the reason you get where you're going. And so, you know, you just buy 1000 paper cuts. Yeah, exactly. And so, like, maybe this won't be the thing, but all she's gonna have the memory of my dad was unstable, or how about my diabetes is the reason he left? Are you kidding me? You know what I mean. And see people do see stuff like that all the time. Yes,

Speaker 1 1:10:30
I know it happens, but that was the big mental shift for me. And he knows that he knew that he knew he messed up big time for me to hear that and that we've just been extra crazy the last few weeks because he I treat him completely different. He says, You look at me like I'm a cashier at Walmart, and I like I'm friendlier with a cashier at Walmart. Yeah, that

Scott Benner 1:10:53
guy's never yelled at me. But Okay, listen my father. My father left when I was, like, 13, and he told my mom, he put this on her. He told my mom, I'm leaving because I can't take the kids. And then he specifically highlighted me, because I was less willing to to just take his shit and, like, bow my head, right? And so I grew up. I had to, like, I had to get through that, like, at 13 years old, like, Oh, my dad, like, abandoned our family, and it was my fault, you know. And I know it's not. And I even knew then it wasn't. But it didn't mean that him just saying it out loud, didn't hang it on me for 20 years to figure out, you know what I mean. So you

Unknown Speaker 1:11:39
still have it inside a little. Of course, you heard that.

Scott Benner 1:11:42
Yeah, of course, I still have and listen, I've been able to, like, fight through most of this crap. But it's, I can't tell you, it doesn't impact you. We're planning right now, I'm planning to announce, I think next week, that I'm gonna put on a cruise that goes out of Texas, for people who listen to the podcast, right? And we're genuinely not sure, like, by the time this goes up, maybe we'll have a little better of an idea, but we're generally not sure how many people are actually going to want to do this. And there's a business side of it. I have to basically fill 200 state rooms for this thing to just break even, right? And then there has to be even more if I want to be able to afford to bring speakers along, or I'm otherwise, it's just going to be me speaking. It's going to be more of a vacation, right? And so I'm talking to the person who's setting this up, and she's like, Oh, we you'll get that many people. And I'm like, I don't know if I will you, but I don't, but I'm telling you, Phoebe, I don't know that. Like, I can't everyone around me is like, oh my god, this is going to be really popular. I have a friend of mine who used to work at JDRF and some other places. She's like, you're this will be bigger than something the JDRF puts on. And I'm like, I don't think 10 people are going to do it. No, you'll fill it up. Listen, the line I'm trying to draw here is, why do I feel that way, in the face of everything that would seem to say the opposite. And I think it's because of little things that happened to me over the years growing up that leave me incapable of actually feeling about myself, even being able to see myself the way I actually am, or my surroundings the way they actually are. And I I agree, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, like, if you have any way to safely get out of this, I hope you take that opportunity.

Speaker 1 1:13:29
Well, that's what we're working on. That's why I said we did the farthest. Thought I'd have a better resolution, resolution, but we're getting, I think we're getting close to it. I just need to get some details. I've worked out you're doing great.

Scott Benner 1:13:42
Listen, I'm gonna let you go. This is a lot to talk about. You must be exhausted emotionally from having this conversation. Let me just throw this in here at the end for all you ladies, if you were my daughters, I would tell you the same thing I told my daughter. Every boy who's talking to you wants to have sex with you. You have to know that when it starts. And then look at every one of their thoughts from that angle, is this a loving thing to say? I thought it was when I sent my daughter off to college, I said you're going to meet some lovely people, some really kind people, nice people, but in general, you have to wonder what people's motivations are, and you really need to know them before you start giving yourself over to them, emotionally or sexually or in any other way that you give of yourself to a person, because for every great person there is out in the world, there's one who isn't they all look the same at first, you know. So you really have to like you just, I'm sorry, I know it's 20 some years ago for you, but like, there were probably signs in there where you could have been like, Why do you say that? Or how come I'm being treated this way, or like that kind of or if you had more self confidence, maybe you would have been like, I'm not going to let him talk to me like that. And again, those 1000 paper cuts, right? And now look at where it leads all these years. Later. And like you said, this happens the way more people than you think. Also it happens in reverse. There are plenty of guys who are lovely, who are out there, yes, you know, married to horror, horrifying women who are treating them poorly, too. This is not a a male, you know, specific

Speaker 1 1:15:15
trait. No, I know men loving. It's the same thing. Yeah, no, 100%

Scott Benner 1:15:21
Anyway, take care of yourselves. Do your research before you give away your Hulu. And good luck to you, Phoebe. I love that we called you Phoebe. That was like, I love that name. That's good name, yes.

Speaker 1 1:15:31
And maybe someday I'll have an update for you so I will let you know. Oh, I

Scott Benner 1:15:36
would love that you you keep me in mind for a couple of years down the road, I think people would like to know what happened, you know, and what you were able to figure out. Because I have a lot of confidence that you're going to figure this out. Do

Speaker 1 1:15:47
you? Yes, I think so. It will just be a pain, very painful thing, but we'll figure it out. Oh, it's

Scott Benner 1:15:54
going to be horrifying. I don't want to lie to you. There'll be a retrospect moment where you'll be far enough away from this horrifying part to look back on both of the horrifying parts and go. It was worth going through that to get away from that. You know what? I mean? Yeah, I think there's a, there's a Somewhere over the rainbow for you. It just might take you a little longer to get there than you hope. Yes, sir. Yeah, good for you. Okay, all right, I'm gonna let you go. Hold on one second for me. Okay?

Did you know if just one person in your family has type one diabetes, you're up to 15 times more likely to get it too. So screen it like you mean it one blood test can spot type one diabetes early, tap now talk to a doctor or visit screened for type one.com for more info. A huge thanks to the contour next gen blood glucose meter for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more and get started today at contour, next.com/juicebox if you're living with type one diabetes, the after dark 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. Okay, well, here we are at the end of the episode. You're still with me. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. What else could you do for me? Uh, why don't you tell a friend about the show or leave a five star review? Maybe you could make sure you're following or subscribed in your podcast app, go to YouTube and follow me or Instagram. Tiktok. Oh gosh, here's one. Make sure you're following the podcast in the private Facebook group as well as the public Facebook page you don't want to miss. Please do not know about the private group. You have to join the private group as of this recording, it has 51,000 members in it. They're active, talking about diabetes, whatever you need to know. There's a conversation happening in there right now, and I'm there all the time. Tag me. I'll say, hi, hey. What's up everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better, and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrongway recording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.


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#1321 IDU: Financial Literacy

Scott and Arden discuss financial literacy, focusing on topics like taxes, retirement savings, and budgeting.

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

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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
OmniPod, welcome back, friends to another episode of The juicebox podcast.

Arden and I are back today with another episode of I don't understand. Today. We're going to talk about money, interest, savings accounts, taxes, stuff like that that Arden doesn't understand. 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. 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. T 1d, exchange.org/juice, box. Go there. Now, join the registry. Take the survey. Takes about 10 minutes. They're going to ask you questions. You know the answers to they're looking for people who have type one diabetes. They're looking for people who are the caregivers of someone with type one diabetes, and you have to be a US resident if you fit the bill, take the survey. T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. They take your questions, they take your answers, they smush them all together, and then they use that information to move type one diabetes research forward. You want things to get better, go take the survey. T, 1d exchange.org/juice, box. All right. All right. You ready for the main event? Here comes

this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by cozy Earth. Cozy earth.com use the offer code juicebox at checkout to save 40% off of the clothing, towels, sheets, off of everything they have at cozy earth.com today's podcast is sponsored by us med. US med.com/juice box. You can get your diabetes supplies from the same place that we do. And I'm talking about Dexcom, libre, OmniPod, tandem and so much more us, med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, okay, so you tell me that it's my decision what we're going to talk about today. Yeah. Okay, so I'm looking at the list this

Arden Benner 2:18
whole conversation. I'm blind too. I can't see anything. I took my glasses off because my headphones squeeze them so, so everything is blurry. Yeah, and if you're making any, like, facial movements or I can't see them, just so, you know,

Scott Benner 2:30
do it? Should I turn my camera off? Or no,

Arden Benner 2:32
no, I'm just letting you know. Okay, so

Scott Benner 2:34
I have two. I'm down to two. I'm gonna let you pick between two. Should I? No, that

Arden Benner 2:40
is not what I just said.

Scott Benner 2:43
All right. Well, the one is like a thing you said you don't understand, and I don't know if you have the energy to really dig into it. Do you have the energy to dig in?

Arden Benner 2:51
I'll never have the energy to dig in. So pick one of them. Okay,

Scott Benner 2:55
I have to be honest with you, I never understand what you mean when you say, I don't understand money, what

Arden Benner 3:03
does that mean? It means I don't understand money.

Scott Benner 3:07
I don't I don't understand what you mean when you say, I don't understand money. What about money? Don't you understand everything? Okay?

Unknown Speaker 3:18
I don't.

Arden Benner 3:20
I don't understand how you're not picking up what I'm putting down right now. Okay, so

Scott Benner 3:25
I'm not, like, you can't possibly mean I don't understand the the relationship between giving someone money for goods or services, or, do you mean that?

Arden Benner 3:36
Like, I don't understand, like, how, like, realistically, how you're supposed to get a job and save enough money for everything that you need. I don't understand all of the different accounts that money is supposed to go into. I don't understand retirement funds. I don't understand how to pay your taxes. I don't understand literally anything about money. So I've decided I will be marrying someone, and they will, in fact, have to take care

Scott Benner 4:01
of that. Okay, so let's go over this, because I think these are things you can understand

Arden Benner 4:05
when I'm when I'm at a point in my life where I'm making enough money that I, like, really need to figure my out. Like, I just want you to know that if I'm not in a relationship with another person, you will be getting a call, and you're gonna have to figure out my money for me.

Scott Benner 4:23
Well, what if you What if you lose money because you're not paying attention to it, or you let somebody help you and turns out to be a jerk and takes all your money? That's all we're talking about right now. We're

Arden Benner 4:32
talking about the fact that I don't even understand it. I probably wouldn't know.

Scott Benner 4:35
Okay, so I'm making a list here, taxes, accounts, retirement savings bills. What else? Yeah,

Arden Benner 4:44
I'm, I'm not doing multiple podcast episodes on this. No, this is we're talking about it right now. Yeah, all right, I'm

Scott Benner 4:50
just putting that out there. Okay, what else? Say that again. I don't even know. I

Arden Benner 4:57
did say it, Dad, what

Scott Benner 4:58
about like? Like? Loans. You understand a loan?

Arden Benner 5:02
Yeah, you get some money. They pay it back to you. Like, interest, loans, I don't really get, okay,

Scott Benner 5:09
interest, um, even how to get a job, how much money you need? Yeah,

Arden Benner 5:17
just like, that doesn't make sense. Like, how are people making enough money to live?

Scott Benner 5:21
Okay, how do people make enough money to live? Well, people make, obviously, all different kinds of money, but I think, yeah, but still, I think that big picture, people who live without going into debt just tailor their lives to the amount of income that they have. Like, most people do that. But like, Do you know how people

Arden Benner 5:47
will say you should make little charts or whatever, and like, like you're spending and how much you're spending, you know, a month in like, kind of whatever, that whole thing,

Scott Benner 5:57
what would that little chart be called? You know, starts with a B, starts with a B. Sounds like budget. Like, yeah, people, people make a budget to, like, see how much money they have coming in, what all their bills are. The chart, I know what

Arden Benner 6:11
about I know what a budget is, okay. What do you mean? It sounds like a budget? Well,

Scott Benner 6:15
no, I thought you were trying to get to budget, but you didn't know the word no. I was

Arden Benner 6:19
trying to get to the point that I've never actually met a human being who does that.

Scott Benner 6:23
Okay, well, and, like,

Arden Benner 6:27
not just because I'm, like, 20, like, it's not like, oh, like, my 20 year old friends don't do it. Like, I've met their families. I've met other like, I don't know a single person who actually does that. And if you're not doing that, how you actually know also, how about this? How about people who say they don't have money and then they whip out, like, $400 and buy stuff.

Scott Benner 6:47
Diabetes comes with a lot of things to remember, so it's nice when someone takes something off of your plate. Us, med has done that for us. When it's time for Arden's supplies to be refreshed, we get an email rolls up and in your inbox says, Hi, Arden, this is your friendly reorder email from us. Med. You open up the email. It's a big button that says, Click here to reorder, and you're done. Finally, somebody taking away a responsibility instead of adding one us. Med has done that for us. An email arrives, we click on a link, and the next thing you know, your products are at the front door. That simple, us, med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, I never have to wonder if Arden has enough supplies. I click on one link, I open up a box, I put this stuff in the drawer, and we're done. Us. Med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGMS like the libre three and the Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide over 800 private insurers, and all you have to do to get started is call 888-721-1514. Or go to my link, usmed.com/juicebox, using that number or my link helps to support the production of the juicebox podcast. This is from a listener. Thank you for introducing me to cozy Earth. For my birthday, I bought stuff to update my bed sheets, comforter and a blanket. It honestly made our lives better. My husband and I used to have a conversation in quotes every single morning about who pulled the covers so far to their side, or how we were too hot or too cold. That never happens. Now, both of us sleep better and more comfortably, and don't get me started on the clothes you all should just try one piece. Take this as a sign to go to cozy earth.com and use the offer code juice box at checkout. When you do, you'll save 40% off of your entire order. Doesn't matter how many sheets or towels or clothing pieces, items, whatever you call clothing, however many you put in your cart, you're going to save 40% when you use the offer code juice box at checkout. Okay, so you've known people, Oh, I know this story. You know people who are always like, I don't have money, I don't have they cry poor right at every turn. We're getting into an Uber I can't help we're at dinner. I can't pay like that. And then suddenly, when they want something, there's plenty of money for it. Yeah, it's crazy. Maybe that's how they're saving the money by not paying for the little incidentals. And then they, they, you know, these 510, $20 add up for them.

Arden Benner 9:28
That's a different story.

Scott Benner 9:29
I'm just saying that is a different story. Okay, so let's start with this, because you're going to get a job at some point in your life, right? God, I hope so. Okay, let's hope that happens, and then they're gonna pay you. We don't know how much, not really important for the conversation. Do you understand how that's gonna happen?

Arden Benner 9:51
Yeah, I'll get this degree. And pray I understand. I

Scott Benner 9:55
meant when you physically have a job and it's time for payday. Do you know what happens? They pay me like. What are you talking about? I'm saying, Do you real? Do you know how that like, if somebody said to you, okay, like, you know, it's time you work here now, you know they're probably going to want to direct deposit into your account, or they're going to hand you a physical check. There's only, like, one of two ways it's going to happen. Yeah, I understand that. Okay, all right, so you have to have a bank account. Wait, let

Arden Benner 10:17
me. Let me rephrase my question. I understand how life works. Dad, I don't understand how money works. I know that you have to hand someone a check. Don't need to help me with that. I don't understand retirement funds, how that money adds up, like, that whole thing, like, I don't get it. Okay,

Scott Benner 10:36
perfect. So first, let's go over this. When you get paid as a US citizen, as the taxpayer. Here's what's going to come out of your check. You are going to pay federal income tax. You're going to pay a state income tax in most states, there are some states where they don't have that you're going to pay a tax to Social Security, a tax to Medicare, a local tax, sometimes Employee Benefit deductions, like if you have a 401 K and you're funding it, the money will come out of your check before you get paid. That's called pre tax money. So you're able to save $10 if you put $10 into a 401 k, the entire $10 goes into it. You're not taxed until you close out the 401 K and take the money out. If you take it out sooner than before you're retired, then they'll tax more of it. If you wait till you're retired, they'll tax less of it. If you have life insurance, health insurance, that all will come out. If your health insurance is through, the company will come out there. If you work in a union situation, that you may pay union dues from your taxes too. Now I'm going to just say here at the 2024, rate, uh, let's, let's like, what's the what's an amount of money? Like, what's what do most people make? Like, what's an average amount of income for people? I just want to pick an average Hold on a second also,

Arden Benner 11:53
like, I don't understand

Scott Benner 11:56
how people can buy houses anymore, okay? Because where do you get all that money from? Where

Arden Benner 12:02
do you get all that money from? The market's only going up, and all the people who are starting to buy houses now are probably people who are, like, in their 30s, right? Starting a family. At the rate we're going, they probably don't have enough money to buy houses. So is that going to change? Like, our house is not going to be a thing as frequently as they used to be. Is it going to be more apartment living? Like what homeownership

Scott Benner 12:27
will be down is what you're wondering? Yeah, is that true? We're going to get to that because that's probably happening already. So I put in $63,000 as an income. Because I asked, you know, what's the average US salary? It gave me $63,000 so for the 2024, brackets, for a single filer, you'd pay 10% on income, up to $11,000 12% on income up to between 11,040 4000 these are like, I'm not saying the exact numbers, 22,000 on income, between 44 and 95 so for a person making $63,000 a year, The first 11,000 is taxed at 10% you pay $1,100 to the federal income tax. Payment from the first 11,000 the next portion is taxed at 12% or $4,047 so those, the remaining portion is taxed at 22% that's the amount over 44,000 which is $4,025 so a person who makes $63,000 a year will pay $9,172 in federal income tax. So take your 63k and subtract nine grand right off the top. You don't have that anymore. Okay, so hold on a second. So we're gonna say your job is $63,000

Arden Benner 13:40
and you lost. I get this. So then what do you do? Oh,

Scott Benner 13:46
I see. All right, hold on a second. I'm gonna keep going. So we have the number. You're gonna lose about $4,000 in Social Security tax. You're gonna lose about $1,000 for Medicare, excuse me, Medic, yeah, Medicare and, and and there's going to be a state income tax like, here's an example. Like, Texas has a zero state, Florida has 10% so it could be anywhere in there. So we're just, we'll, we'll ignore that for now. But you make $63,000 you live in Texas, you really only have 50 grand. Now, are you going to put money into your 401, K to try to save for the future? Maybe you are. I don't know how much that's going to be. That comes out of the 49 as well. You know, what would people say normally, is, you put in as much as you can. Some people put in 2% people put in some companies match up to a certain percentage. So like, some companies will tell you, like, hey, put in up to 6% we'll match up to 6% so if you put in 6% of your income pre tax, which over here would be, I don't know how much, like 3600 a year. Then they'll put in 3600 as well. And we'll get to how that, like adds up over time. So now you got $50,000 and what you're saying is, I'm out of college. I got 50 grand. I'm making a year. I don't have any money saved. How am I supposed to save up? Enough money while I'm renting somewhere to put a down payment on a house, right? Because, if you're like, what the Yeah, I'm hearing you. Because you have 50, say, you have 50 grand apartments at this point, rank, like small apartments range anywhere from, you know, a few $100 a month, depending on where you are, all the way up to, I've seen 1600 $1,900 a month in some like metropolitan areas, right? Yeah, around here in New Jersey, I think you're gonna easily pay $1,500 a month for a one bedroom apartment, yeah? So then the idea is maybe you'd go to a two bedroom apartment and pay $2,000 a month and then split that with somebody, and then now for a roommate. Now you got 1000 gone, but it doesn't matter. Let's say you're paying, let's just say you're paying $1,000 a month, which would be cheap for rent. So I got your 49 so good.

Arden Benner 15:49
I don't understand how, like, how 10 prices go up for things, but the wage doesn't go up. How is that allowed?

Scott Benner 15:58
Why don't incomes rise at the rate of inflation. You

Arden Benner 16:04
know, I understand inflation. I'm just saying, like,

Scott Benner 16:06
how come, that's allowed. How come? How come? Yeah, allowed. It's a free market. I took $12,000 off for rent. You're down to $37,000 now. You planning on driving a car? Yeah, okay, if you were to buy a car, like a new car that costs $50,000 that's a lot, but let's so let's say less, but let's just say 40,000 let's say you have a $40,000 car, $40,000 car loan. Right now rates are at like, 6%

Arden Benner 16:38
Oh, like, rates and like, Oh, someone else take care of it. When I was you can get, like a financial advisor, right to help you with this stuff, and they'll help you figure this out, right? Then you got to pay them. Yeah, but you have to pay them. It's so ridiculous. What about the fact that I learned, like a couple years ago that when you have a child, when you go to the hospital, have a child, you have to pay, like, an outrageous amount of money to make

Scott Benner 17:04
the because the hospital's a private organization. It's a company, yeah, what the like? So a $40,000 car loan at 6% and I spread it over seven years to make the payment as low as you could is. It says 84 months. So they're going to charge you a VIG interest on the money to lend you the 40 grand, right? Also, they're not going to just give you 40 grand. If the car is worth $40,000 they're going to expect you to put down a down payment of about $4,000 probably. So let's say you go to buy this $40,000 car after your first year. Now you got to give them four grand. So your 37,000 goes down to 32 33,000 and let's see what the payments are on this. So you're gonna pay on $40,000 I should have said 36,000 but on $40,000 you're gonna pay $584 a month for 84 months, and pay back 49,000 total dollars on the $40,000 you borrowed to buy a $40,000 car at today's interest rate of 6% from a bank, you're actually going to pay $50,000 for the car, 40,000 to the car company, 10,000 to the bank. They'll lend you the money. It's going to cost you about $584 a month. Yeah, see, I'm not following, okay, what part all of it? So it's just like, I Oh, okay, what part didn't you follow? Yeah, I

Arden Benner 18:32
just told you all of it.

Scott Benner 18:33
There's a company that makes a car Ford, okay? They tell you, it's cost you $40,000 you walk in, then you go, I want that $40,000 car, please. They say, Okay, you're gonna think of us $4,000 they say, Okay, fine, give us $40,000 and you say, I don't have $40,000 and they might say to you, well, go to a bank and try to borrow $40,000 from them. So let's say you go to your bank and they agree to give you $40,000 first of all, you don't own the car. The bank does. The bank buys the car and lets you drive it while you're paying them for it. See, I

Arden Benner 19:07
hate that. It's not great. Just give me the car.

Scott Benner 19:12
It's your car. You'll drive it every day, trust me, if you crash it into somebody that's on you, not the bank.

Arden Benner 19:17
Sometimes you ever just think about all this stuff, and you're just like, literally, we're on a floating rock, and we're all gonna die pretty soon. So just, honestly, just,

Scott Benner 19:27
that's all. It's just stop, drive a car.

Arden Benner 19:30
Yeah. Like, what are we doing?

Scott Benner 19:32
So you would like it if the people at Ford Motors showed up didn't, like, ask you for any money for their car, and maybe in in exchange, you could work in a town where the people at Ford work, and if they needed food, you'd give them food, and if you needed a car, they'd give you a car. Vice versa, the people who made the seats would give the like we'd all trade for everything. I mean, then your whole life would be making the the seats for the cars to give to Ford so that some. Anybody else would give you food so that, like, you know, I mean, like, it would be,

Arden Benner 20:03
I understand we need money, you know, because we aren't great at everything. We know how to do everything. Other people know how to do things that we can't do, and we need their help, and therefore we need something that is going to force them to help us. And, you know, whatever, I

Scott Benner 20:16
get that under something to get people out of bed in the morning. So, yeah, money,

Arden Benner 20:21
right? But sometimes I'm just like, guys come on. Like, if someone needs to go to the hospital and they can't go because they can't afford it, it's just like, guys come on. Like,

Scott Benner 20:32
that sucks, right? So you think maybe it would be nice if healthcare was somehow subsidized by the government, that's a whole different problem. Okay, so let's go back to your car. Now, it's $584 a month, every month, but you only make So let's kind of go backwards a little bit. You only make $63,000 a year. Yes, okay, now what if I have children? Yeah, you shouldn't do that, probably. So you have children like, what? What am I going to do? So keep in mind that this $63,000 you you're gonna lose, we gave like the full number that you'll lose every year in taxes, which is 9000 for the Fed, 4000 for Social Security. So 910, 1112, 1314, probably about 15 grand, right? But you gotta split that up over 12 months. So if I take 15,000 divided by 12, it's 1250 so I take the 63,000, divided by 12, you're going to make about $5,200.50 cent, $5,250 a month. Then we're going to, like, take out, like, let's just say 1200 for taxes. So you're really going to bring home $4,000 a month, or $1,000 a week. Of that you're going to pay. This is why you're not going to end up with a $40,000 car. But of that, you're going to pay $584 for the car. Now you're down to $3,400 and we said maybe $1,000 for rent. Now you're down to $2,400 you're gonna a car is gonna need gas. Gas is expensive. Let's say you gotta drive to work. Let's take out $400 for gas and auto insurance. Now you're down to $2,000 now, were you planning on eating? No.

Arden Benner 22:15
Not anymore, not so like,

Scott Benner 22:20
also, you have a fair amount of medical needs, you know, you're gonna absolutely have to get your health insurance from the company. I assume that's gonna cost, I don't know about, probably three or $4,000 a year. So hold on a second. Um, let me just take 3000 divided by no but also

Arden Benner 22:40
to get like, good insurance, you need a good job. Yes,

Scott Benner 22:44
there are a lot of companies that give you crappy insurance, and that's so then,

Arden Benner 22:49
let's say I can't get a job like that. Great right away. Then you have to, you have to pay more, even though you're making less. Basically, yes, I just

Scott Benner 22:57
took out $250 for health insurance payments a month, but that's just to have the insurance that took you down to 1800 then you're actually gonna have to spend the money to get this stuff. So, but let's skip that for now. We'll go back to the medical stuff. How much do you think you're gonna need for food a month?

Arden Benner 23:12
God, I don't know. Wait, so off topic. But like, say you have a kid, right? And that kid wants a toy, yeah? But I want a pair of shoes, I have to give him the toy. He

Scott Benner 23:23
teach the kid to shoplift the shoes because the toy is cheaper. Okay, I don't know what you're gonna do there. We're down to $1,816 a month. We have to take out your food.

Arden Benner 23:32
Wait, why are you skipping past the real question?

Scott Benner 23:34
I think you have

Arden Benner 23:35
to buy the kid a toy. It's a choking hazard. I would never do that.

Scott Benner 23:39
How much do you think food costs for one person a month? How much does How much do not? Does do groceries cost for an American, adult monthly? $200 200 Oh, honey, I don't think that's gonna even get you a bag of beans. 300 a low cost plan is 250 to 300 a moderate cost plan 350 to 450 a liberal, like a liberal, like you're spending more is 500 to 600 let's say we put you in the middle and we take out $350 a month for groceries. Now you're down to $1,466 you've got leftover. I don't know what your medical stuff is going to cost. I know what we put out every year for it. It's a lot, but let's just take a number. Let's take $5,000 and divide that by 12 and say that your medical costs are $416 a month. This is round. I'm going to now remove that. Okay, so now we got the car, the gas, the car insurance, the rent, the food, the medical insurance, the taxes and the medical supplies. You have $1,000 left. How much are the shoes? Probably $1,000 now let me ask you, go ahead. Are you gonna have a pet by any chance?

Arden Benner 24:59
Chance? Oh, that's what I was gonna say. I was gonna say, what if I have three chameleons? Then you gotta buy crickets. I actually don't want that was a joke. Go ahead. Well, no, I'm not gonna have a pet because of this. You're

Scott Benner 25:12
definitely not gonna have a pet. A bag of dog food that we buy is like 40 bucks, and when Indy was alive, we needed two a month. Now we're using less, because basil's tiny. I mean, do you get your nails done? How about how about your eyebrow threading? What's that

Arden Benner 25:28
cost? So serious,

Scott Benner 25:30
I need to do that. So personal care, hygiene, makeup, it's like 12 bucks for Eyebrow threading. I'm taking that off minus 12. Are you planning on getting your hair cut?

Arden Benner 25:39
Yeah, I'm I'll be broke by the time this is over, I'll be in debt. Well,

Scott Benner 25:44
then that's what ends up happening, is that, is that eventually people use a credit card for something, and then,

Arden Benner 25:51
yeah, let's throw in there a Mrs. Degree. You're

Scott Benner 25:55
gonna get an Mrs. Degree. Yeah, that's, this is how it's going. Keep in mind, we have not gone over household goods, like cleaning supplies, kitchenware, furnishings you don't have. Yeah, I

Arden Benner 26:08
know. So, okay, so you're proving my point. I don't understand. I don't get it. How is it? How does that work? Well,

Scott Benner 26:13
I think what most people do is, when they start off, people give them furniture to get started if they have, like, friends or family, like, usually, sometimes your mom will be like, oh, yeah, I was thinking of getting a new sofa, which is code for, if I give you my sofa, will you take it? Because I don't really want a new sofa, but I don't want to offer to buy you a sofa. So, like, maybe you'll get stuff from people to get started with, but you're missing, like, we still haven't hit like, internet. Do you want to watch television? Yeah, I

Arden Benner 26:39
understand. I don't.

Scott Benner 26:40
I'm gonna take out.

Arden Benner 26:41
I get it. I don't need this interview. I'm just saying, right? It's ridiculous. Yes,

Scott Benner 26:47
you're gonna be, I don't under, yeah, I

Arden Benner 26:48
don't understand how you're supposed to do all this, and then how you're supposed to retirement fund. You're also supposed to have an emergency fund.

Scott Benner 26:56
Like, yes, what do they say your emergency fund should be? This people probably laugh out, I think they say the equivalent of two months of your pay. Hold on, how much money do they? Whoever they is, suggest you have

Arden Benner 27:14
people who are going to steal it from you. Emergency Fund,

Scott Benner 27:17
yeah. Then on top of that, you got to deal with the rest of the world trying to take your money. Everyone's going to try to take your money. Every phone call you get that you don't know of it's somebody who thinks that they is trying to get your money. Emergency Fund guidelines, three to six months of expenses. Oh my. So if you with what we just did here, three months of your expenses would be $12,000.06 months would be 24,000 and that's, you know, in case you lose your job, in case there's something like that happens, if you have, yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah. So your questions are, what Go ahead.

Arden Benner 27:51
I guess my questions are to men between the ages of 20 to 24 if

Scott Benner 27:59
you're looking for a girl who needs insulin, you've got good health care. I

Arden Benner 28:05
don't know what question. I just don't get it. I just don't understand you're supposed to do. It just makes sense to me. So I will

Scott Benner 28:10
say this, when mom and I were first together, we did not make very much money, but it was a different time. Obviously, I'm old now. I'm 53 when mom and I got married, I was like, Are you sure you're 53 I'm 100% sure there that right now I'm 53 and if I was born in 71 and married in 96 so 8190 I was 25 when I got married, and back then, I think I made $20,000 a year and mom, but

Arden Benner 28:39
Is that, like, a different amount of money now, like, what would Yeah,

Scott Benner 28:43
let's see, what is $20,000 income in 1996 equivalent to it's gonna go through, like, the inflation cycle. Give you like a reasonable answer here, $40,000 that's crazy. Yeah, so if mom and I both made 20, which is about what we were like doing back then, then that would be the same as two people living together right now, making 80. And then we were married for a handful of years, before mom got pregnant with coal, and then it all started. Now we when we were first married, we lived in an apartment. It was a one bedroom apartment at a fireplace. It was the last fireplace I've ever had in a place I lived. Oddly, we paid just under $1,000 a month for it. It was very expensive. Back then we were probably, I don't remember how much we were making, but if we were making 40 and then we were paying taxes, and maybe we had, maybe we had, like, 35 after taxes. We did have health insurance. We were paying for that. We did try to put money in our 401, K, it wasn't a lot. Then we paid for the the apartment, food we you know, we had some, like, we'd go out some. Times, and, you know, to dinner or to a movie or something like that, that money was going but back then, a movie cost like $5 for a ticket, maybe, I mean, like, popcorn was a couple bucks. And

Arden Benner 30:10
so it's like, what 16, $17 for a ticket and go to a movie. Yeah, sometimes

Scott Benner 30:15
it's 20. They're like, do you want the screen to be bright 20? You know what? I mean, like, you want to, do you want us to project it through a tinfoil? Well, for that, we can do it for 15 So, yeah, so that's the problem. Is that everything is going to cost money, and kids are exponentially expensive, like they get more and more expensive the longer they're alive. That's tough. And healthcare is tough. People sometimes don't take their kids to the doctor because they can't afford it. People are rationing insulin because they can't afford it. Like, there's all kinds of stuff going on. So your question is, how am I going to get by? Is that right? And forget, get and almost forgetting, like, how do I save money and have extra and maybe try to succeed? But like, how am I going to live? That's everybody's question. So is that what you mean when you mean when you say I don't understand money? No, not really, but like, you know, you want to go understand

Arden Benner 31:08
I don't understand anything. So I couldn't even ask the questions, because I don't get it.

Scott Benner 31:12
Okay, here's one for you. Let's say that you put $2,000 Am I gonna have to add and subtract? I'm gonna do it for you, $200 a month in a 401 K, and let's like, be generous and say it makes 5% a year, which would be crazy if it did that. But okay, makes 5% a year. So I put in $200 a month into my 401 K and it makes 5% a year. How much would it make in the first year, first decade, and in 25 years? Sometimes chat GPT messes this stuff up, but let's take a look, see what it gives you. Puts out the formulas like it's doing something. So there's an interest rate, okay? And that interest compounds, which compound interest is something I have to admit, I understand about enough to say that I know how it's piling up, but to describe it would not be within my purview. So it looks like, right now, it's just explaining to me what it's doing. So here are the amounts you're good.

Arden Benner 32:23
This is not, this is completely like, off topic, but continue what you're talking about.

Scott Benner 32:28
After the first year, if you put $200 a month in, you might you'd approximately have $2,466 it says after 10 years, you'd have about $31,000 and after 25 years, you'd have approximately $119,000

Arden Benner 32:46
so okay, but then what that's 20 years later? So $119,000 is equivalent to, what $80,000

Scott Benner 32:52
you'll still be able to go to a movie,

Arden Benner 32:56
maybe one movie with popcorn.

Scott Benner 32:58
Oh, wait, yeah, with inflation, what is 119,000 worth in 25 years? By the way, anybody who's not using chat GP is he like this? Chat GPT like this. It really is valuable for stuff like this. It makes mistakes, but you just kind of have to run your eyes over

Arden Benner 33:17
it and hope for the best. But it's great for dating Chad. GTP, I'm

Scott Benner 33:21
saying to the point of the conversation to have $119,000 in accumulative savings 25 years from now. It says the approximate worth of it in today's dollars is $56,000 that's crazy. So you'll have to save $119,000 to have the buying power of $56,000 in 25 years.

Arden Benner 33:42
Yeah. So it's, yeah, there's no point. All right, I got it.

Scott Benner 33:45
You think what that teaches you is, don't save money? No,

Arden Benner 33:48
it just teaches me to, I don't know, jump off a bridge or something. Now, here's my question. Go ahead. This is what money and like all that makes me think of, like the 1% and like all that, whatever, how is now, this sounds kind of insane, but I'm actually kind of surprised that our world isn't like The Hunger Games, or like divergent or like those dystopian sort of things, because, like, I feel like at some point we're gonna all be like, I don't know. You know what I'm saying. Well, I want to make sure, are you looking up what the Hunger Games is right now? No,

Scott Benner 34:23
I'm what I'm asking is, is the poorest person in the United States is equivalent to the richest person where? So the point of it is, is that the poorest person here probably is living significantly better than most people on the planet?

Arden Benner 34:35
No, I understand that, yeah. But I'm just saying, like, I think it's interesting that our world isn't split up, like, I don't know, like, I feel like that's like, such a thing that could happen

Scott Benner 34:46
is that people would say, what's the point of this? Like, why am I trying so hard if I'm gonna be poor at the end, or if I'm gonna be poor the whole time? Like, that feeling,

Arden Benner 34:56
no, you didn't listen to a thing. I just said, Say it again. Well, do you. Know what the Hunger Games and Divergent series are?

Scott Benner 35:02
Yeah? There's like, all right, I got her, so it's that girl from the Okay? And they got different towns, right? They have different districts. And those people have different, like, jobs within the society,

Arden Benner 35:16
yeah? So like, district one is like luxury or something. District 12 is like coal mining. There's like, district eight is textiles, like that whole thing. But each district goes in, like, the number of, like, how much money they make, basically, okay. And then in divergent it's like they're split up into factions. So there's like, erudite Amity, Abnegation, candor, like all that. They kind of, like split the world up. And I think it's so interesting that our world isn't really split up like that, but like,

Scott Benner 35:45
what is it not just sort of differently

Arden Benner 35:48
it? I mean, it is, but it's not inhumane. I guess the way that

Scott Benner 35:54
we it depends on what group you're in. I guess how you feel about it. Well, yeah. I

Arden Benner 35:57
Well, yeah. But I hear, you know what? I

Scott Benner 35:59
mean, yeah, an example. It just says here, I'm

Arden Benner 36:02
just saying this because I'm saying, like, I feel like, as the years go on, money gets so, like, you either have it or you don't have it, and at some point isn't that gonna just, like, divide the world in half?

Scott Benner 36:14
Probably already has. It says here that a person making $14,000 a year, annually in the United States. So that's making $1,000 before taxes, and they're probably taxed at a fairly low rate, but that makes them wealthier than people living in places like Sub Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, where incomes can actually be significantly lower than that, and poor people in the United States still often have, not always, of course, but often have basic amenities, some sort of healthcare, some sort of education, etc. And that's not true in other places. All right, so what's a poor college student like you supposed to do? You take any comfort from the fact that most people end up okay. Think they work it out.

Arden Benner 37:03
There's a difference between they end up okay, and they end up happy.

Scott Benner 37:06
You think happy is money?

Arden Benner 37:09
I mean, like, comfortable is money, right? I mean, there's a lot of people aren't comfortable. They're just, like, making it well,

Scott Benner 37:17
there are plenty of people who wake up, make money, give it away. It's gone by the end of the week and they start over again. There's some people who don't make it to the end of the week

Arden Benner 37:24
with the money that they have. Yeah, that's not comfortable. Are you what? Yeah, no,

Scott Benner 37:28
I'm saying, I don't think that's I think that definitely means not comfortable. But are you joking? Like, does it make you think about marrying somebody when you don't want to? No, I would never do that.

Arden Benner 37:39
I'm just saying, making jokes. I

Scott Benner 37:41
know I know I just didn't want, I didn't know if it, if it felt pressuring like that. Do you think people pick the thing they study at school based on how much money they're trying to make? I mean, some people, yeah, that's a shame. It's probably how we end up with people who don't like, like their job, what they're doing, knowing they're doing, care, just trying to keep their job. Well, chat,

Arden Benner 38:01
whatever you're using right now. Let me. Let me put it down, because it's like, helping, like, med students cheat through school. Oh,

Scott Benner 38:11
so you're telling me, five years from now, I'm gonna get a doctor who's like, let me just ask my phone real quick. Yeah, yeah. How do you know that's happening?

Arden Benner 38:18
Because I see videos of it online everywhere. Kids in like, lecture halls, like, supposed to be learning, like, biology and this and that, and they're just using chatgtp to do, like, do their quizzes and stuff.

Scott Benner 38:28
Do you think that's going to matter? Do you think it's gonna have a big impact? Yeah. I mean, I imagine it will, too. I'm just wondering what you

Arden Benner 38:37
think. Yeah, you know, I most of the world is just idiots. So yeah, I do think that. And then if idiots feel like they have the right to do something intelligent, like become a doctor,

Scott Benner 38:48
so you're saying, What if someone who does not have the capacity? I

Arden Benner 38:53
think that we live in a world where people think they can do anything now, and I don't like that. I don't like that. You want everybody to know their limits. Yeah, they I know my limits. Get me a lane like, Listen, I'm not. I'm not trying to go to school for finance to help you guys out. Because, look at me, I don't know. You get it. I don't know. I don't get it. Not my thing. So, so you would like people stay in

Scott Benner 39:20
their lane, yeah? But you think people have a feeling like I could get anything accomplished now because I can, I've help in my pocket. Oh, 100% Wow. Interesting. You're seeing that right now at school.

Arden Benner 39:32
I mean, I've been seeing it since I was, like, in high school, and of kids I went to high school with who are doing stuff, and I'm like, Oh, my God, that person would probably pull on a push door, like I can't believe that they're gonna slice someone open one day. Is that a thing you often say? Because that's hilarious. That's how I feel. Oh, okay, pull on a push door is just how I feel. They're just that type of person. Okay, let's

Scott Benner 39:58
go back. Do you. So you understand taxes now. No, but listen,

Arden Benner 40:04
it's a great conversation we had. What

Scott Benner 40:06
about like you understand about how you save for retirement? Or like through a 401, k, for example.

Arden Benner 40:10
No, I know that. I just, you know what I think I'm learning. I don't want to do all of this. Okay,

Scott Benner 40:15
so you would like to not be involved in these things. Yeah,

Arden Benner 40:20
I might need someone to take care of this, from anyone who enjoys money. You know, all those fun I don't believe

Scott Benner 40:25
most people enjoy talking about this stuff. I think it's just the people that do. I take care of the money here, and I don't enjoy it. Well, yeah, but you have a podcast. Some people go to school for like, finance and Oh, economic. Oh, I see people who, like, love, like talking about numbers and money, will probably enjoy it. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 40:44
so let's let them do it. Is

Scott Benner 40:46
that a tinder question? Do you enjoy money, not making it? I mean paying the bills, like physically writing out checks and going online and sending payments? Do you see, do you understand?

Arden Benner 40:58
Like to ask, I just like to ask people about their health insurance, honestly?

Scott Benner 41:01
Do you ask them that? Yeah, of course, I do. Do you understand how like credit ratings work? Oh, no,

Arden Benner 41:08
let's not do that. Okay?

Scott Benner 41:11
Because if you have poor credit, it decreases your borrowing power. Yeah. And then, instead of paying 6% which would be a good rate for a car loan, as of today, you could end up paying much more where we have that whole thing is so confusing, I don't understand it at all. Know how much credit card rates are right now?

Arden Benner 41:28
Oh, I actually just learned about this. Go ahead.

Scott Benner 41:32
Doesn't mean I know. Let's go with I feel

Arden Benner 41:35
like it's like between like seven to 12%

Scott Benner 41:37
18 to 25% APR. Oh, damn, which is nuts, right? So if I bought a $2,000 item on a credit card and could only afford to pay $40 a month in payments on an account with a 25% APR. How

Arden Benner 42:14
long? Oh, my God, could you do this any slower would

Scott Benner 42:18
it take to pay off the 2000 I'm asleep. This is gonna flatten your brain, by the way. So it's not you go out and you're like, I need a bed and a dresser and this and that, and I spend two by the way, good luck in a bed and a dresser and a mattress and everything for $2,000 but let's just say

Arden Benner 42:37
that happens. Good luck. It's gonna be ugly too. Well that might be true and ugly now, so

Scott Benner 42:44
also this thing told me there's an error, because the monthly payment of $40 is too low to even cover the monthly interest charge. So if you paid $40 a month on $2,000 to 25% you would never pay it off. You'd have to pay at least 4167 so let's say I pay 50 a month. Pardon, credit cards are maybe the worst decision you could make. You'd rather not have something than buy it on credit like this. Trust me, it will and

Arden Benner 43:16
could honestly, really you're supposed to start building your credit score though.

Scott Benner 43:19
Yeah, so you borrow money and pay it back immediately, like, I wouldn't put anything on a credit card. I couldn't pay off at the end of

Arden Benner 43:27
the month. You have to have that. So then how am I supposed to?

Scott Benner 43:30
Yeah, well, you're gonna, you're screwed. I haven't. I'm an adult, but like, you know you're, you're and a lot of people still can't. I'm just lucky that, like, we have two incomes, and we can do that, you know what I mean. But there are plenty of people who do this, and it is crazy. With a monthly payment of $50 it would take approximately, do you want to guess in

Arden Benner 43:50
years or months? Because, no, because I don't know what we're saying right now,

Scott Benner 43:53
if you paid $50 a month to try to pay back a $2,000 purchase on a credit card that was at 25% interest you would pay for seven years and three months to pay off the $2,000 that's 87 months And already 87 times 50 is $4,350 on 25% interest, you're gonna pay back the 2000 once over plus 350 you're gonna pay more than double the amount that you that you and where do you find out what happens when you buy a house? How much do you think a house car? You

Arden Benner 44:35
see what I'm saying when I'm like, oh my god, like, what am I supposed to do with my life?

Scott Benner 44:39
Yes, but doesn't this just tell you that the way society works is that you jump into the pool, you get a job, you buy a house and a car on credit. You make your payments every month, you try not to get cancer and you die at the end. Yeah, but for a young girl like me, Dad, it kills you. What about a How much do you think a house cost? Let's just say a $200,000 house. I just say $200,000 mortgage.

Arden Benner 45:04
I think that's, I think that's way below the average house price.

Scott Benner 45:08
It very well, maybe. But I'm saying, what about a $200,000 mortgage? I would

Arden Benner 45:12
say the average house price is probably $600,000

Scott Benner 45:16
what if I know average home cost in America. Google says median prices are Wow. It gives it state by state, but 354 30, Arkansas, 250 so I'm low, even for Arkansas. No, no disrespect to Arkansas. So let's go. Oh,

Arden Benner 45:37
I'm in a little disrespect. I'll

Scott Benner 45:38
put a lot of people listen from Arkansas. They're lovely people. $400,000 I'm sorry, mortgage at and let's see what the average interest rate is, average

Arden Benner 45:48
where, even, honestly, where is Arkansas on a map? I'm going to be so honest. All right,

Scott Benner 45:52
it's down to the left of Texas Near as I can, or of Tennessee. I think you

Arden Benner 45:57
know what? That's unfair to them, because you know Texas, that whole area, like, when you're looking at a map, you're only really looking at Texas. All right, hold on. So I'm

Scott Benner 46:06
doing $400,000 mortgage at 7% and meanwhile, I'm gonna look at a US map. No, I'm looking at the map. Yeah, it's right. It's to the west of Tennessee, is it not? I don't know. My phone won't load. All right, let's see, did you Did we say Arkansas? Yeah, yeah, I got it right. Well, I cursed. I didn't mean to curse. I knew it. I knew where Arkansas Wait Are we not supposed to curse on here. You can curse if you want, but now Rob has to cut it out. Oh, I've done it a lot. Arkansas, yeah. Oh, interesting, yeah, that whole

Arden Benner 46:39
little area right there. I've never thought about before, how

Scott Benner 46:43
much do I have to put down on a $400,000 mortgage? I mean, I think it's 20% like, is that what they want? Generally, 20% if you bought a $400,000 house, they'd ask you to put about $80,000 down just to get the loan. So then you're going to be financing $320,000 Does

Arden Benner 47:10
anyone live in New Mexico? Yeah,

Scott Benner 47:14
who I there's people listening that live in New Mexico and Arizona. And have you ever

Arden Benner 47:19
actually met someone who lives in New Mexico. I've met people who live in Arizona, but what about New Mexico? No never met them. I've

Scott Benner 47:25
interviewed people from New Mexico. How do you know that's true? Because they'd say, I live in New Mexico. They say that they do All right, ready? So you have a $400,000 house. You want to buy it, you have to hand them $80,000 in cash. So this is back to your question about, are people going to be able to buy houses? So if you make $63,000 a year, if you make $63,000 a year and live on a shoestring budget that, like we discussed earlier, and are able to save $500 a month, then it will take you about 160 months to save $80,000 and that is 13 years. So yeah, yeah, I guess that isn't gonna work out. So if in 13 years, saving $500 a month, you could save up $80,000 then you could give that $80,000 to a bank to buy a $400,000 house, which 13 years from now will probably cost more like $3 million then the 80,000 won't be enough

Arden Benner 48:27
and feel like I'm listening to a car commercial. Yeah.

Scott Benner 48:31
Well, you asked if you could buy a house, the question so the answer is, no, no.

Arden Benner 48:35
I didn't ask. I said, I can't I

Scott Benner 48:37
would think then the way this is happening is that people, young

Arden Benner 48:40
people are either inheriting their parents homes. They're either getting

Scott Benner 48:44
homes from family members. Maybe parents are giving them money as down payments. Maybe people are are co signing on loans and helping. I don't know. I mean, listen, like I said, we made 20 and 20, which apparently now is like 40 and 40. I couldn't buy a house back then. So the way we were able to buy a house, I'm happy to share this with people, is that mom and I bought a condominium, right? So we found a condo that was basically about the same amount of money every month as our apartment. We bought that thing. I think it was worth, I don't remember how much, not a lot. And somehow there was a was like a housing boom in the first two years that we lived there, and the value of the condo went up so much that we sold it took the money that we made from the sale and put it down on the house like so we couldn't afford a down payment. We just got lucky. We buy a condo. The value of the condo went way up. We sold the condo, took the extra money from the sale, put it down on a house, started over again. That house was a box, like it was terrible house, and I mean literally terrible, but it had a little bit of land. And we thought, okay, so now we have some land. And one day, maybe we can just build another house there. And that is what we ended up doing. But it took us the better part of 15 years to do that. Took a long time. I don't know, 15 years? Yeah, you don't, but you do gotta live, no. So what are you saying? You don't. You'd like to skip all that stuff in the beginning.

Arden Benner 50:20
Someone just make me famous. Like, honestly,

Scott Benner 50:24
but even that, like, fame nowadays, I

Arden Benner 50:26
know you have to be, like, a list celebrities, yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 50:30
Fame's not the same as it used to be. I have a measure of fame, and that's meaningful. You don't get out of here. I do, but like, so some, some other people do too. Like, they just, they have, like, low level, like, you know, bubble fame, like, inside of it, to ruin the world. It has, yeah, do you know who said this would happen? Oprah Howard Stern,

Arden Benner 50:53
I almost got it honestly.

Scott Benner 50:55
Yep, I remember him saying, everybody can't be famous. I had to work really hard to be

Arden Benner 51:00
this famous. It's a terrible, terrible idea. Yeah,

Scott Benner 51:03
everyone has some measure of fame. Now, not everybody, but a lot of people

Arden Benner 51:07
do. Some people have to be above other people. It's just how it has to go. Why does it have to be like that? It just does. Has to be like that. Unless, Listen, I'm not one of the people who's above other people, and I wish I was, but I'm not, and I accept it, and I see how it is. And you know, even

Scott Benner 51:23
those people, it doesn't last for like, here, I'll name some people for you. Do you know who Hillary Swank is? I know her name, yeah. But that's it. She was incredibly famous at one point. Not, not anymore, even fame. The Fame is very fleeting. There are people right now that all of you are listening to and you flip by on your Instagram, or you're talking and ticking or whatever, and you go, I know that person. Oh my god. They're so famous. And six months from now, you won't see them anymore. They're famous so fleeting. It goes so quickly.

Arden Benner 51:53
I can't relate to that, because my whole like, Tiktok is like edits of like, terrible television shows.

Scott Benner 52:00
So I just like, I don't even know terrible television show edits. I

Arden Benner 52:04
don't actually know what's going on in the world. I just know what was going on in the world, like 10 years ago when the TV show came out.

Scott Benner 52:10
Gotcha All right? Well, you understand money any better now? No, you understand how you're gonna make your way in the world today with everything you've got, taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot. This is the opening theme song to cheers. Wouldn't you like to get away? Do you know this one at all? I wish it would stop. Okay, you don't know the song at all. Gotcha, you're gonna leave school in a couple of years. Probably have to go to grad school, right? You can have all that cost of going to school. No, not grad school. No, oh, you're gonna go to, you think you might go to law trying to go to law school? Yeah. Okay, so you're gonna get your your undergrad, then

Arden Benner 52:51
maybe go to how long is grad school? Do you know how long grad school is? Can be

Scott Benner 52:55
one to two years, and sometimes longer, depending on what you're going for, because law school is three to four How long is law school? I just said, Hold on a second. I'm doing so no, I'm,

Arden Benner 53:07
you know, I'm about the same. You know, you can trust me and chat you to trust

Scott Benner 53:11
you. I'm building to an idea. What does it cost? All right,

Arden Benner 53:17
I'll just sit here and let it happen. I guess

Scott Benner 53:20
so a public law school with in state tuition could cost you between 20 and $40,000 a year. A public law school out of state could cost 30 to 60,000 a year, and a private law school is going to cost between 40 and $70,000 a year. So you're going to pay somewhere between 90,200 $1,000 to go to law school, then you're going to get out of law school. Owe somebody that money, and if you're lucky, get a job, but probably not say that. It'll probably take a year to get a job, at least get it at some point, but you have to pay the loan while you're waiting for the job. You don't know about this. Oh, we're gonna Arby's or something. I don't we've got the meats. I know what you're saying. You didn't have to do that. Why not? I'm trying to get a job. I'm trying to get a job getting an Arby's commercial gig. You think I could be the voice of the Arby's people?

Arden Benner 54:09
No, my God, I would turn the television off anyway.

Scott Benner 54:13
So now you're gonna get out right and you're gonna but now listen, what's happening right now is that

Arden Benner 54:18
just start a small business where I, like organize my fridge. It's what people do. Yes, we've also like a thing now, like, you can just do that. Wait,

Scott Benner 54:27
you're gonna start a small business to organize your refrigerator. Yeah, you see

Arden Benner 54:30
those women online who just wear, like Pilates clothes and organize food in their fridge and clean their countertops and put like little beads for like laundry into like jars, and they make money. Wait.

Scott Benner 54:42
They go to like, other people's homes and do this. No, they do it in their own home. They

Arden Benner 54:47
take a video of it, they put it online, and they make money. They don't make that much money. And in the background, they're like, Okay, guys, so today we're going to I'm like, oh my god, shut up.

Scott Benner 54:57
I happen to know how much money some people. Will make for doing influencer stuff, and it is a shockingly low amount of money. I know what they still make in I think it's ridiculous. I don't think it's enough to pay for law school, is what I'm saying. Now. I'm just trying to also, if you think about this, you're gonna have this undergrad degree when, when you're about, like, what? 2220

Arden Benner 55:18
Oh, don't. Don't tell people that I well, they that I've ruined my life. So

Scott Benner 55:22
you're gonna be 22 or 23 you're gonna still have three years of school. You're not gonna be like, you're gonna be like 27 when you take the bar. Yeah, I

Arden Benner 55:30
know I've thought about it. I don't want to talk about it to be fair, from 27 is it that much different from being 26 No, it's not. No, I

Scott Benner 55:37
don't think that's not what I was gonna say. What I was gonna say is, what if, at the same time you're like, spidey senses. Tell you you should make a baby. That happens to ladies?

Arden Benner 55:45
I don't think I'm gonna make a baby. Yeah, I don't know what happened. So many problems. It's gonna be like a mutant. Well, what'll

Scott Benner 55:51
be wrong with it?

Arden Benner 55:52
I don't know. There's just a lot wrong with

Scott Benner 55:54
me. You won't understand money. For certain, it'll be like, What is this? And

Arden Benner 55:58
everyone's got, like, depression and anxiety nowadays, so just whatever, throw my problems at someone else's problems. Oh, god, you're

Scott Benner 56:04
afraid that if it's gonna come out, you're gonna meet a boy with depression and anxiety, and then you're gonna have type one diabetes and like, Hashimotos. I don't have Hashimoto I'm sorry, hypothyroidism. And then that all gets mixed together, and then the baby comes out, and it's got all those problems. Yeah,

Arden Benner 56:20
it's like, Jack Jack from The Incredibles, but it's not cool.

Scott Benner 56:24
It's the other version of Jack Jack. Also Jack Jack's not really the cool version, isn't he, like a monster.

Arden Benner 56:29
He can, like, turn into, like, the devil and all this. But, you know, he's a superhero. My kids just gonna, like, have a lot of medical issues.

Scott Benner 56:37
I think they're gonna make another Incredibles movie. I mean, they should. It's

Arden Benner 56:41
the best Pixar movie. Is it? What's the most overrated Pixar movie? I have my answer.

Scott Benner 56:47
Wally, no, okay,

Arden Benner 56:50
everyone's gonna hate my answer.

Scott Benner 56:52
Hold on. Oh, you don't like it. No, I

Arden Benner 56:54
don't dislike it. It's just overplayed.

Scott Benner 56:58
Finding Nemo No, ratatouille. Ratatouille. Ratatouille is good, solid.

Arden Benner 57:05
It's a good movie, and it's been ruined for me.

Scott Benner 57:08
They pushed a down your throat too much.

Unknown Speaker 57:10
Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:11
they do. I will never forget watching Bugs Life first run in a movie theater and sitting there and thinking, Oh, my god, is this what animation looks like now, this is amazing. That was that long ago. What do you think of that? I don't have a lot to think about on that one. What's your favorite Pixar movie? It just told you the incredible. It's not inside out. I

Arden Benner 57:33
do like inside out. Wait, actually, let me look at the Pixar movies real quick. I'll

Scott Benner 57:37
tell you what's this. Is how we're going to end this episode by ranking the Pixar movies list all Pixar

Arden Benner 57:43
films. My God, can you stop with that thing over there? Just google them yourself. Hey,

Scott Benner 57:49
I mean, I could just Google Pixar films. I'm gonna go through them and I'll tell you how I feel about them. Okay, I have them in order. I don't have them in that order. Go ahead. All right, first,

Arden Benner 57:59
let's talk about, we said The Incredibles. That's the best picture. If y'all say that just right away, cars I've never cared for the cars movies you don't like the cars, I've just never cared for them. No, okay. Oh, another great movie, right? I would say right behind the Incredibles, Monsters, Inc. Monsters Inc, is a great movie, all right,

Scott Benner 58:24
no one talked that way about it. Um,

Arden Benner 58:27
the Toy Story movies, you know, I would say if there was like, a list, they'd be right in like, the middle, which I guess is a low for some people, but it's like, Ah, God, was there, like, five of them. Now, like,

Scott Benner 58:37
I've had enough, there's three. Hasn't been there's not there's four, wait, there's Oh, there's four. My God, there is Toy Story four. Have I seen Toy Story four?

Arden Benner 58:45
Yeah, I had, like, the shits really bad that day we were at the movie theater. How you remember Toy Story four? I do. It was in the summer, and I just remember like, oh, I had my period, and I had the shits, and I also drank a slushie, and everything was going terribly, and I missed, like, kind of the end of the movie. And I came back and Little Bo Peep was like, kissing Woody. And then we went home, and I, all I could think was, like, what just happened?

Scott Benner 59:12
Little Bo Peep was kissing Woody, huh? All right. Oh, what? What else you got there? Um,

Arden Benner 59:17
Finding Nemo. Great movie. Probably more so the top of the list. Oh, I don't know what I'm clicking on over here. Oh,

Scott Benner 59:26
can I go through them in like, year order?

Arden Benner 59:30
Yeah, you know what I'll give you like a thumbs up, thumbs down, neutral.

Scott Benner 59:33
Toy Story, neutral. 1995 Bugs Life, 1998 neutral, I like bugs, life, Toy Story, 299 I'm neutral about all the toy stories, Monsters, Inc, 2000 Oh, one thumbs up. Finding Nemo thumbs up. Incredibles, double thumbs up. Cars, thumbs down. Ratatouille, neutral. OmniPod Wally. Wally

Arden Benner 1:00:02
is also overplayed. So I'll just do like, but it's a, it's a great movie, but overplay. So I'll do a neutral

Scott Benner 1:00:07
for that one. Up. Up is great. Thumbs up. People met Sanj in the first episode of this. With you for a moment. She loves. She on the phone in it. She is on the phone in it. Yeah. My god, she's she's like, she's just, like, she's like, just, she's like, she's like, Yo all I heard you say was, No, you shouldn't plug your Instagram because I couldn't hear her. And then then she's like, I just wanted to let you know that I just messaged you a tick tock. You should check out my comment because you're gonna love it. And that's it. And she's gone up is really good. But Sanj cries

Arden Benner 1:00:40
a lot. Sanj cries every single time she watches up every single time. Toy Story,

Scott Benner 1:00:44
three neutral cars, two thumbs down, brave. Okay, you know what

Arden Benner 1:00:52
very controversial, Merida is one of my favorite princesses. Okay, so, but I really don't love the movie, but I love when she's like, I'll be shitting for my own hand. I'm like, yeah, yeah, Merida. And then she like, turns her mom into a bear. And I'm like, well, why'd you do that? But so that's neutral for

Scott Benner 1:01:15
me. Monsters University, thumbs up. Inside Out, thumbs up. The Good Dinosaur I've never seen that. Yeah, I have to tell you, I took hold of that I remember, and it wasn't a favorite for mine. Finding Dory. Thumbs up. I do like Finding Dory cars three,

Speaker 1 1:01:34
but I just, I don't care for these cars, movies, cocaine.

Scott Benner 1:01:41
I don't like Coco. Okay, everyone likes Coco, and I don't like Coco. The art and it's awesome. It looks awesome. I know I just don't like it Incredibles two better or worse than Incredibles,

Arden Benner 1:01:54
one worse, but not bad at all. Still, a thumbs up. Then Toy Story four is next. My experience for toy. Story four was a thumbs down, but I give the movie a

Scott Benner 1:02:03
neutral. Okay. Now here, this is going to be interesting. Movie, not good, but Tom Holland said it on, oh, onward. I didn't like that movie. Yeah, it wasn't good. Uh, soul, remember soul? Oh, I'd

Arden Benner 1:02:19
love soul. Thumbs up for soul. Here's

Scott Benner 1:02:20
what I don't know about soul. I really loved it too, but it came out during covid, right? So we were all just like, please. Something happened. And then Pixar was like, Here, we'll give you a brand new movie you can watch in your home. And we were like, thank I

Arden Benner 1:02:33
think, I think soul has one of the best quotes from a Pixar movie. Really find it. Okay, yeah, I'll find it. Keep going. Okay. Uh,

Scott Benner 1:02:40
Luca. I didn't like Luca. Is Luca, the one where the boy is the fish and everybody's Italian, yeah, I love that.

Arden Benner 1:02:49
But also, I watched Luca the day after we put Indy down. So I, you know, maybe that wasn't a good idea. I

Scott Benner 1:02:54
really enjoyed Luca. Try watching it again. We're gonna get a lot of smoke for this next one. Have you? Have you seen turning red? Oh, I've

Arden Benner 1:03:03
seen that. Oh, I hated that. You didn't like it. No, she has diabetes. I don't care. It was terrible.

Scott Benner 1:03:09
I didn't see. Oh, wait, I may be. I've seen bits and pieces of it. So something about hockey, right? Like the girl plays ice hockey, that's,

Arden Benner 1:03:15
that's an inside out. She plays hockey.

Scott Benner 1:03:18
Oh, then turning red. I've

Arden Benner 1:03:19
never seen, guess you have, I've seen it. God, you know what? It was so bad. I forget what it's about. Okay,

Scott Benner 1:03:25
I do love the little short where they eat the dumplings. That's good. I don't know what that's called either light year. I've never seen Have you seen light year? I don't know what that is. It's a Buzz Lightyear film. Oh, with Chris Evans.

Arden Benner 1:03:38
No, never seen it. I

Scott Benner 1:03:39
haven't seen that. I realized um, recently that Chris Evans is much shorter than I thought he was. He's beautiful, elemental, Elementals. Oh, terrible, is it? I've never seen it, yeah. And then there's one called Elio that's not out yet. I don't

Arden Benner 1:03:59
know. Okay, okay, ready? This? This is the um, yeah, go ahead. This is the quote from um, from Seoul. So he's talking outside to like an older woman. I think that she might like work at the place that he's, I don't know something like that. And she says, I heard this story about a fish. He swims up to this older fish and says, I'm trying to find this thing they call the ocean. The ocean says the older fish, that's what you're in right now. This says the younger fish. This is water, but I want is the ocean. But the way that she says it in the movie, and like with the conversation they're having, is probably, I want to say one of the best Pixar scenes ever. You probably just

Scott Benner 1:04:37
freaked out everybody who's listening, who really pays attention to the podcast, because I very frequently try to get them to read a college commencement speech called, this is water. It starts with that parable. Was it actually? Yeah, oh, I

Arden Benner 1:04:54
didn't know that. Yeah. That's like my favorite Pixar scene. Yeah, I was, I remember I was watching, I put on soul. Last year at school, when I was I just wanted to die, honestly, there never go to SCAD. But I was sitting in my bed thinking about how much better life could be, and I put so long because I was like, this is, like, one of those sad but uplifting, but like, whatever movies I put it on. I'm sitting in bed, I'm writing something, and she said that, and I just started crying. And I was like, OmniPod, get me out of here.

Scott Benner 1:05:23
I have you never seen me give a little book to people as a graduation gift. Give the book to everyone but me, yes, because I can give it to you when you

Arden Benner 1:05:30
graduated from college, yeah, but now I've set that back 17 years, so Well, I'm gonna

Scott Benner 1:05:34
give it to you when you get your undergrad. But it's called, this is water. It starts with that parable. Oh, wow, that time my frontal lobe will be developed too. Yeah, you're gonna understand interest and compound interest and everything. Yeah, all right, this was good. I love you. I'm glad we got to see each other for an hour. Okay, I'm

Arden Benner 1:05:50
not going anywhere, and we could still talk after this. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:05:52
know, but I've got other things going. I've got texts here from clients, and I gotta, I gotta work, I gotta be I got a life here.

Arden Benner 1:05:59
Oh, okay, I guess I'll just go. Then

Scott Benner 1:06:03
the hell. Oh, that's just what it is. Plus we, I mean, how much of this do you want people to listen to you talking about? I'm not saying that they have to listen to this. No, I'm saying it's an hour and eight minutes long. We gotta, like, it's time to end. Yeah, I

Arden Benner 1:06:14
know I thought we were done. Are we not done? We've been recording the whole time? No, yeah. But I thought, like, oh, it was over. Now just say talking.

Scott Benner 1:06:20
No, no, we're done. But I do want to say this real quickly before I stop the recording, so we're not done. Oh, my God, right. The short, some of the short movies by Pixar are excellent. And the one that sticks out my head as just enjoying it the most, Jerry's game for the birds. And there's one is

Arden Benner 1:06:39
Jerry's game, the little chess match. Yes,

Scott Benner 1:06:41
I really, let me look I also really like one man one man band is

Arden Benner 1:06:46
that? I That's like they, they don't speak in that one, right? They don't speak in a lot of them.

Scott Benner 1:06:56
Like when they took the Luxo Jr out of the beginning of the Pixar movies, I was disappointed, like, the lamp that comes bouncing in, I

Unknown Speaker 1:07:03
take care.

Scott Benner 1:07:05
Yeah, I don't. I didn't like, oh,

Arden Benner 1:07:07
I have, no, I don't have any pitch. So that was terrible.

Scott Benner 1:07:10
And BA, oh, I think was the one where they make, Oh, I like lava, lava, yeah, where the island, like falls in love, right?

Arden Benner 1:07:18
Oh, the one man band, yeah, I like that one.

Scott Benner 1:07:22
Did you say Jerry's game? Yeah, yeah, I like that one. There's this one short, but I can never remember the name of it. I

Arden Benner 1:07:30
really don't know what it's called. I don't know if it was Pixar, but it's about, like, this man and this woman, and they're like, sitting on a bench, okay? And like, I remember, like, he has a briefcase or something, and his papers fly everywhere. Okay? I saw it when I was, like, nine years old. I can I'll never be able to, like, I don't remember what it was. It's

Scott Benner 1:07:53
called Paperman. Paperman, it was released in 2012 and premiered before the movie wreck. It Ralph. Oh, maybe it did. Yes, it was paper man, yeah, I've never, I don't know if I know it. How did you chat? GPT, oh, my god. How

Arden Benner 1:08:10
did you find that

Scott Benner 1:08:11
I chat GPT, the following man and woman on bench, papers fly Pixar. Paper man was released in 2012 and premiered

Arden Benner 1:08:20
before meeting the girl of his dreams on a commuter train. Office worker uses a fleet of paper airplanes to get her attention after spying her again in a skyscraper window.

Scott Benner 1:08:29
Have I ever seen that one? I don't think I've seen I don't know,

Arden Benner 1:08:32
but I was like, nine, and I was like, Oh my God, that's adorable. You

Scott Benner 1:08:36
like that one? Well, you can watch it on the on the YouTube if you want Disney plus YouTube. All right, I don't know if you can YouTube it or if you can YouTube people's reviews of it. Why would I want to do that in what world I know? Yeah, I'm gonna have to, like, I'll go to Disney plus. I'm gonna watch it today. That's what I'm gonna do when I'm all done. All right, say goodbye. Okay, goodbye.

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