Scott Benner 11/19/24 Scott Benner 11/19/24

#1362 Rollin’ with Elizabeth

18 year old Elizabeth shares her story.

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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
Welcome back, friends to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Today, I'll be speaking with Elizabeth, who is 18 years old. She's an athlete into martial arts and judo. She's had type one diabetes for five years. This is her story. 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 looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox podcast, private Facebook group. Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes. But everybody is welcome type one, type two, gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is and a US resident? If you are, I'd love it if you would go to T 1d exchange.org/juicebox and take the survey. When you complete that survey, your answers are used to move type one diabetes research of all kinds. So if you'd like to help with type one research, but don't have time to go to a doctor or an investigation and you want to do something right there from your sofa. This is the way today's episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 the one year where CGM that's one insertion a year. That's it. And here's a little bonus for you. How about there's no limit on how many friends and family you can share your data with with the ever since now app no limits. Ever since us med is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox podcast, and we've been getting our diabetes supplies from us med for years. You can as well us med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number get your free benefits. Check and get started today with us. Med, this show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, G VO, hypo, pen. Find out more at gvoke, glucagon.com, forward slash Juicebox.

Elizabeth 2:26
Hi, I'm Elizabeth. I am a type one diabetic athlete, and I do judo, which is a martial arts and today I'm on the Juicebox podcast.

Scott Benner 2:36
And a second ago, Elizabeth introduced herself, and I didn't have her track recording, so now it's recording. We're all good. Here's what I learned in the 35 seconds before I realized I wasn't recording your voice. You're 17, you're almost 18. You'll be 18 on July 19, which is just a few days after my 53rd birthday. We're both cancers, but you don't find yourself to be particularly emotional like I do? Yeah. Do you think it's possible that none of that means anything, whether you're like a Pisces or a cancer or something like that?

Elizabeth 3:09
Personally, I think that it has nothing to do with you. You are you, and you be strong as you.

Scott Benner 3:15
I agree. What makes you come on the podcast? What do you want? What made you reach out from previous

Elizabeth 3:22
experiences I haven't really had the chance to meet any other type one diabetes in the martial arts community, and those that I have met, they do not compete to the level that I do. Hold on a second you were hoping

Scott Benner 3:35
what, Elizabeth, you sound like, you might be a little ass kicker. Are you out there rolling with the big boys. What's going on?

Elizabeth 3:41
Well, I would hope so. I actually I compete interprovincially and internationally on Team Alberta. So Oh, my God. Oh,

Scott Benner 3:50
you're Canadian.

Elizabeth 3:51
I am, yeah, oh, I

Scott Benner 3:53
didn't know. I thought you sounded extra polite, but I didn't know. Hold on, a second. How long have you had type one diabetes?

Elizabeth 4:00
I have had type one diabetes for five years this November.

Scott Benner 4:04
Oh, okay, no kidding, so you were how old when you were diagnosed?

Elizabeth 4:10
I was about 11 or 1211. Or

Scott Benner 4:13
12, okay, 11 or 12 in Canada. Always been Canadian. They didn't. You didn't move there or anything like that. Yep, born and raised. So when you were diagnosed that they put you on regular and mph,

Elizabeth 4:24
regular and mph. I'm not quite familiar with the terms. Then you

Scott Benner 4:28
didn't. Then it wasn't you. Some of the provinces use an older form of insulin when people are diagnosed. But you you, what did you start with?

Elizabeth 4:37
I started with basal. Glory and humility, actually. Okay, so

Scott Benner 4:40
you started with more modern Did you know that province? And should I say province or province? Does it matter to you? I don't want to insult you either. Art is fine. Okay, province. There they do it differently from from one to the other. Oh, that's cool. Interesting. So you're in. Let's see either I gotta test myself on this Toronto. Toe would do more modern insulin. So would trying to think of the different provinces. Never mind. I'll never figure it out. Do you live? Do you live where the abominable snow monster lives? Or are you near a building?

Elizabeth 5:13
Well, I mean, I'm in a building, but it gets pretty cold here.

Scott Benner 5:18
Is it an igloo that you're in, be honest, not

Elizabeth 5:21
quite, no, it's, it's a pretty nice house, I'll be honest.

Scott Benner 5:25
I've had, I've had some deep conversations with other Canadians. One was a little girl recently, she tried to tell me that you even have cars in Canada, which I thought was crazy, because obviously you live on a frozen hellscape. There's just polar bears and penguins and everything. But she said, No. She said, like, there's like, towns and sidewalks and everything. So I chose the believer.

Elizabeth 5:46
Are you saying, As shocking as it sounds, that is true, we do have cars.

Scott Benner 5:49
You're representing the same ideas. Okay, that's okay. When did you start? By the way, did you like when I said rolling? Like I knew a little bit about judo? Yes, yeah. It's pretty impressive, I imagine for you first, let me talk to you a little bit about your diagnosis. I want to just kind of get that story for you. So do you remember much about it?

Elizabeth 6:07
I do actually, I was in my junior high years, and I had been sick for a little while. Not quite sure why. I was like, oh, probably just a common cold, like, whatever. But then it didn't really start getting better after about three, four days, I ended up going to get checked out at the hospital nearby, and I ended up admitted that night, and they were like, well, yep, you have type one diabetes. And like, this is something you'll have for life. And I definitely remember being pretty scared because I didn't really know what was going on and what was happening, but I was lucky enough that I had both my parents there to support me. Very nice.

Scott Benner 6:46
Any other family members, brothers, sisters,

Elizabeth 6:48
I do actually, I have three younger brothers, none of which have diabetes, which they're pretty lucky. The

Scott Benner 6:55
word bothers wrong. But when you were younger, did it? Did it make you upset that you were the only one that had it,

Elizabeth 7:01
honestly, I don't think it did. I think the biggest part for me was that, honestly, I was actually really, really scared of needles. Yeah, so I was just a little bit jealous. Were you

Scott Benner 7:10
able to get past that, or do you still have an

Elizabeth 7:14
aversion? I think I'm okay. Now, I look at a needle and it's like, well, this is part of my everyday life. So I think I'm okay. Now, cool.

Scott Benner 7:22
How about other autoimmune stuff for you? Do you have celiac or thyroid stuff, or anything like that?

Elizabeth 7:27
I do. Actually, I am a celiac. Oh, but, but

Scott Benner 7:31
that's probably not a problem in Canada, because you just drink ice water all day, right?

Elizabeth 7:37
As much as I wish that was true, I definitely missed the taste of bread.

Scott Benner 7:41
Tell everybody how to prepare whale fat as soap.

Go ahead. I have no idea. Okay, fine.

So you do. When were you diagnosed with celiac? Oh, I

Elizabeth 7:52
think I was nine before the type one. It was before the type one.

Scott Benner 7:57
You were making a little pile of autoimmune issues, and nobody else in the family with that, even I

Elizabeth 8:03
have a distant cousin who's like, three times removed, who has celiac, but I think that's it. Jeez.

Scott Benner 8:09
Lucky you. Well, Elizabeth, way to just gather all the stuff up for yourself and not share it with anybody else. How about your parents? Did they have anything going on,

Unknown Speaker 8:21
like medical stuff,

Scott Benner 8:21
no, how about that? So did you have, do you remember a virus before you were diagnosed, or anything like that? Yes,

Elizabeth 8:28
actually, I do remember this. So about a week and, yeah, just about a week before I was diagnosed with diabetes, I got a really viral, like disease or sickness. It was called 10 Foot Mouth Coxsackie

Scott Benner 8:41
virus. Yes, that's what my daughter had before she was diagnosed. Yep, yeah. Now you know somebody else who that happened to. So, yeah, we're going to expand your little universe, uh, pretty, pretty quickly with, uh, with this conversation Coxsackie. No kidding, yeah. Arden had it when she was two, and it just didn't go away, and then next thing he knew, she had diabetes. Sucks. Sorry. Well, what a bummer. How do you find the podcast like? How does a 17 year old listen to a podcast made by a 52 year old guy? 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 G vo hypo pen 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, jivo kypo pen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store G, vo khypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use G. Pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/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 insulin OMA visit, gevok, glucagon.com/risk, for safety information. I don't know how you guys order your diabetes supplies, like CGM pumps and testing equipment, but at our house, we use us Med, and I'm gonna walk you through the entire process right now. I'm looking at the email from us Med, it says it's time to refill your prescription, dear Arden, please click the button below to place your next order. Then you click the button that was it. Two days later, I got this email, thank you for your order from us. Med, we wanted to let you know that your order and it gives you an order number was shipped via UPS ground. You can track your package at any time using the link below, and then there was a link, and then it showed up at our house. Now I'm going to walk you through the entire chain of events. On the 29th which was the Saturday I clicked on the email on that Monday, the first I got an email that said the order had been sent four days later on the fifth the package arrived. If you can do it easier than that, you go get it. But if you can't us, med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today with us. Med, get your diabetes supplies the same way we do.

Elizabeth 11:42
So actually, it was my mom who found the podcast while she was doing a little bit of research internationally for other athletes like myself who compete like at high levels and have diabetes, and she recommended the podcast to me. And so I started listening, and I was like, this seems kind of cool, and I kind of applied, or I kind of messaged you on a whim. I was like, well, maybe he'll say something, maybe not. And here I

Scott Benner 12:04
am. Here you are. Well, cool. So the podcast has been valuable for you. Very, very excellent. I want to figure out what you learned and how you apply it. First, tell me, where are you competing you you mentioned, like, how you what's the is it like a, I don't even know what to say, judo, like league or I don't understand,

Elizabeth 12:24
so, yeah, so I'm part of something called Team Alberta. So each of the provinces has its own, like, judo team that represents the province. And to be part of this team, you have to travel interprovincially. So I think I'm visited pretty much each of the provinces two or three times to even in the past two years. Okay, and I go and I compete, and it's like, the more medals you win, the higher you're standing. And it's like, the better chance you have of then competing internationally. So I was actually given the chance this past February to go to Denmark and compete for Team Alberta as well.

Scott Benner 12:58
You beat up people from Denmark. I did

Elizabeth 13:01
a little bit of beating up and then got beat up as well.

Scott Benner 13:05
Tell me how you get involved in judo. Judo in

Elizabeth 13:07
Canada specifically is a bit of a smaller community, just because it's not as widely spread as something like hockey or lacrosse. But there are a lot of local communities that have their own Judo clubs, whether they be fairly small or the same size as my club. My club is the biggest in the city that I'm from. All you have to do is show up to a class. There's nothing more to it. Everyone is there is very friendly. They're very welcoming, and they're there to teach you how to fall, how to participate in the sport, and simply how to enjoy it and have fun. How old were you when you started? I think I was about five, five or six. Really,

Scott Benner 13:44
did one of your parents do it, or is it something you showed an interest in? They took you to it.

Elizabeth 13:49
So my mom actually got remarried a couple years ago, and my stepdad was the one who was doing judo when we first met him, and he was like, you guys, should come try this awesome sport. And I was actually a dancer at the time, and I was like, beating people up. That sounds awesome. Finally, so I went, and I kind of just kept going, no

Scott Benner 14:09
kidding. Oh, that's very cool. What would you say about judo that other people wouldn't know like because you hear people who do it, they're very passionate about it, and I hear them talk about community and mental toughness and and learning moves and being able to feel how things are happening so you can respond to them. But like, what? What about that is attractive to you? Yeah, definitely,

Elizabeth 14:32
I definitely agree with all those things me. Personally, I find that tudo has given me a very strong sense of morals, and it has really taught me things like resilience and determination, and it has given me a lot of grit. It also gave me the chance to connect with people all over the world, and its community, as you said, is very vibrant and it's very welcoming. And even though you might go and you might compete against some of these people that you know on the mats when. You come off, you shake their hand, and you at the end of the day, it's just you did a good job. We had a good fight like, Thank you for coming. Thank you for showing up.

Scott Benner 15:07
What's the goal of a of a is it a match? Is that what it's called? Yes, okay, what's the goal of a match? Are you trying to score points? Are you trying to submit people? What is it you're trying to accomplish?

Elizabeth 15:20
Yeah, so it's, it's a point system, so you can score half points and you can score full points. So a half point is called a wazari, and a full point is called an EPON. And for the ages 1414, and up, once you score a full point, the match is actually over. But you can score that point in multiple different ways. You have your groundwork techniques, which you can do chokes, arm bars, or you can hold a person down for 20 seconds, and then in your standing you can throw this person, and if they land completely on their back, then that is the full point.

Scott Benner 15:54
How scared are you that you're going to dislocate your knee or elbow or something like that?

Elizabeth 15:59
I mean, I have had some experience with injuries in the past. Actually broke my collar bone and my foot on a couple different occasions, but I think that even though I was scared to get back on the mats after that injury, after any of the injuries that I've sustained, I think that it's the most important thing was that I kept going back and I kept persevering. Because even though I was scared, getting back on the mat renewed my self confidence, and it made me stronger in the end as well.

Scott Benner 16:30
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Elizabeth 18:07
Well, as a girl, just kind of, in this world, it's, it's nice to always have those kind of self defense skills, right? So even just that, and like, knowing that I know how to defend myself if I get into a tricky situation is really valuable to myself. And then for the self confidence part about coming back after an injury, I can say for sure, there is no better feeling than overcoming that mental block where you think you can't because of an injury, you sustain in the path, and you go above and beyond, and you achieve even more than what you wanted to originally. I think that is such an important part of your love for your sport, and it's important that you continue with it and go with it throughout your life.

Scott Benner 18:50
Yeah, yeah. You can tap out of a match anytime, right? You could just tell the referee, like I'm done. Is that right? I

Elizabeth 18:55
mean, yes, but I wouldn't suggest it, because your match only usually lasts about four minutes, so there's really no point in tapping out honestly. Okay, you want to you want to persevere. You want to push through. You want to do as much as you can in the time that you're given and get the best results you can Okay,

Scott Benner 19:14
and is it more about physical strength or using your opponents like motion against them. Like I hear people talk about that, I don't think I understand that completely.

Elizabeth 19:25
I think that's based on the person you are as a fighter and the person you're fighting. So in my personal category, I'm actually on the smaller side in terms of height. I'm only about 5556, and most of the girls I fight are about 510, 511, some even six feet. So a lot of these times, I can't simply muscle my way through them, because they just have longer arms, longer legs. They can reach their techniques better. So I have to use a little bit of a combination of that strength to get them moving, but then also the speed and technique that I've been developing throughout my. Charge you to life.

Scott Benner 20:00
Talk about the technique is it? Is it as specific as I feel pressure here, so I reach for this hold. Like, it's a lot of holds, right? Like, like, how would you explain what you're doing to somebody who has no idea about it? Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

Elizabeth 20:18
So the way that we like to describe how you get someone moving is, we call it action reaction. So if I'm going to do something, so if I'm going to push you backwards, you're going to react and try and react forwards. So as a judoka, we tend to use that action reaction to our own advantage. So if I'm going to, if I want to throw this person forwards, I'm going to get them moving backwards so that their reaction is going to come forwards, and that'll facilitate the throw for me,

Scott Benner 20:45
okay? Then you take their motion, their their forward motion, and you throw them with it. Yeah, got it, okay, and then, and a lot of it's about that, right? Like, technique, like responding properly, and then for you, being fast. Like, is that the idea that you so you're quicker, but some of those longer girls, maybe like, are structurally more I don't know what the word is capable. Is that, right?

Elizabeth 21:11
Yeah, yeah, I would say that I definitely rely a lot on the speed and the the mechanics of the technique that I like, which is called a drop technique. So it's actually one where I drop to my knees and then I continue to roll, which loads the person onto my back and turns them onto their own back.

Scott Benner 21:28
Is this an Olympic sport?

Elizabeth 21:32
It is actually,

Scott Benner 21:33
do you have eyes on that? Or is that not the level you're at? For

Elizabeth 21:37
me, I have not been training to the level where I would go to the Olympics. However, we did just send multiple Canadian athletes, including a girl in the under 57 category, to the Olympics. Oh, cool. From your group. No, not from our group, but she is a Canadian athlete who has trained out of Alberta. Am

Scott Benner 21:55
I using the word Dojo incorrectly? If I say, Are you involved in that?

Elizabeth 21:59
No, Dojo is just the name of the space that we use for our training. For our club, actually, we don't have our own facility currently, okay, although we are getting one for the next season, which, yeah, yes, oh, cool. But we actually work out of a local YMCA. So for Judo, you have the Tommy mats. So they're the mats that you do your the sport on. So every class we have Monday, Wednesday, and we have Saturday, we come and we lay down our mats, and then we teach our younger kids classes, which I also help participate in, and then I also do my own classes, which are the late class in the evening, and then we have to put all of our tatami mats away afterwards. Elizabeth, how

Scott Benner 22:37
do you stop yourself from getting what they call cauliflower ear?

Elizabeth 22:40
So I have yet to have an experience with cauliflower ear. Knock on wood. I'm very lucky for that, but I have had a couple of friends in my sport who have had cauliflower ear. The solution to it is simply getting it drained repeatedly. And while it's a very painful process, or so I hear, it prevents your ear from getting that massive swelling around it,

Scott Benner 23:01
wow, that's just from the rubbing and the grinding on the ear. Is that, right? Is that also, like bacteria from the mat? Or no, yeah, is it, I don't know. Isn't that funny? That's, that's what I want to know about. How does that happen? Because it's, it's frightening when people have it. You know what? I mean? Like, visually, you're like, wow, that's feels crazy, but and I just, I'm thinking of you like you just, you're so young, you know what I mean? And I know you don't think of yourself that way, but I'm like, Oh, my God, I don't want to have a big thing on her ear. Do you roll with men and women, or do women stay with women? Men, with men.

Elizabeth 23:36
So in competition, it is just male, just female. You're competing against a girl if you're a girl, and you're competing against a guy if you're a guy. But in the club, it is beneficial to work with everyone on your competitive team, and it helps you, and it helps them, and it creates better bonds between you and your teammates. So I tend to roll with pretty much anyone on the meds, even the guys who are a lot bigger or the guys who are a lot smaller, just everyone is kind of included. But it is important that me, as an athlete and as someone who has technique and skill, but also some strengths that I modify the way that I fight different types of people. So if I'm fighting a younger kid or someone who's a little bit smaller than me, I'm not just going to out muscle them, out strength them. I'm going to use a little bit more technique try and work with something I don't usually do, but if I'm fighting someone who's bigger and a lot better than me, fingers crossed that they're toning down their strength a little bit, and I'll be working on my specific techniques for someone who is bigger, who is taller than me. Gotcha,

Scott Benner 24:37
do you see Judo as a strictly athletic endeavor, or do you think of it as therapeutic as well?

Elizabeth 24:44
I would say, I would definitely say both. There are some days where I'm like, oh my goodness, I gotta go to judo. But every single time that I get on those mats and when I come off afterwards, I feel like a different person. I could be having the worst day in the world if I go to a judo class I come off. Mats, I'm smiling, I'm happy, I'm joking with my friends. It's such a way to get out all of those feelings that you might not be able to express otherwise. And it's it's just so much fun, like it's hard not to be happy. Once you come off the mats after a good day of like a hard sweat and good training,

Scott Benner 25:17
you have a feeling for what it is that the that the activity releases, or what it's, what it's giving you that you didn't have in your day? Is it just the aggression thing,

Elizabeth 25:26
maybe a little bit. But I find just just getting on the mats and, like, not having to, like, talk to someone while I'm just doing a little sparring match, is just kind of the best therapy, because I'm there, I'm in the zone. It's like, okay, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna throw. And then when it works out, it's like, yes, like, I got this. We're doing this. And it's so therapeutic,

Scott Benner 25:50
yeah, so you feel accomplished, too, if you can, like, hold, grip, hold, throw, and you're like, Wow, I did it. Like, I like, I matched their emotion. I I got my technique ahead of theirs, and I kind of won this moment. Definitely, definitely feels okay. That's really interesting. Okay. Now, what about with diabetes? Like, when you first started judo, you didn't have it. Did you notice changes? Like, is it more anaerobic or aerobic of an exercise? Because it feels like it's both. It

Elizabeth 26:18
definitely is both. I found with diabetes, I had to actually tone back quite a bit on the like, the amount of utero that I was doing, simply because I wasn't quite sure how my own body worked in coordination with it. So I had to figure out, like, Okay, how do I do this? How do I manage my diabetes when I don't have insulin running, or this or that?

Scott Benner 26:40
So it took you months, years to figure out how to manage insulin with judo. Or do you still struggle with it? Or is it a thing you understand now?

Elizabeth 26:49
I would say that I understand it pretty well right now, and I'm fairly lucky. I have parents who work in the medical field, so they're really, really helpful, especially in competition. I feel like I have a good handle on what I need to do is sometimes, sometimes it's a little bit hard to do it, or it's like, oh no. There's a moment where, like, I didn't give a Bolus or this, and it's like, I'm still working at perfecting it, but I understand my body a lot better.

Scott Benner 27:15
Yeah, your parents are in the medical field. Yeah. Is it like, can you be in specific, but tell me about like, kind of what they

Elizabeth 27:23
do? Uh, yeah. So my my stepdad, he works, is as a trauma doctor at the hospital here, and then my mom is, she works in orthopedics, so it's like casting and like fixing bones and all that cool stuff.

Scott Benner 27:36
Oh, wow. Oh, is that how they met? Did they meet at the hospital? I

Elizabeth 27:40
think they met at a work related party, but I'm not entirely sure. I'd have to brush up on that.

Scott Benner 27:47
Don't worry. It's okay. Do you meet people to date at judo? Like, new people? I mean, like, you know, have you ever, like, met somebody you've been interested in, like, romantically at judo? Or do those things not mix? I

Elizabeth 28:00
know people who have, but I try to avoid any kind of romantic feelings with anyone on my club. I definitely picture them more as, like, my brothers and my sisters and like those people that, like, I'm really, really close with and I have, like, share a really strong bond of friendship and, like, almost like sibling rivalry with, yeah, I gotcha, but I don't think I could ever see myself romantically interested in anyone at my club specifically interesting.

Scott Benner 28:25
Can I ask, why is it just because you're so close to them, or is it because they're involved in judo? I

Elizabeth 28:30
would say a combination of the two. I'm really close with them, so I don't think I could see myself in a romantic relationship with any of them as well as we're all focused on doing better and improving in judo. Plus a lot of them have significant others outside of judo, so I just tend to stay away from it. I was just

Scott Benner 28:45
wondering if it's a thing you didn't want to mix because of the focus of judo and, like, if you now you're suddenly romantic with somebody, if that maybe ruins what that thing is like, it's because it seems like it's such a specific thing, I don't know. Like, I was just wondering, okay, you wear a pump, or do you inject?

Elizabeth 29:03
So I have a T slim. I am a pump certified, yay,

Scott Benner 29:08
using control. IQ, yes, I do with Dexcom. G6 Yeah. G6 okay. How long have you been wearing that?

Elizabeth 29:16
So I've had the Dexcom, I want to say, like, almost three years now, and the pump just under that, so, like two ish, so

Scott Benner 29:26
you take it off, obviously, to compete. Yes, yeah.

Elizabeth 29:31
So I just for the Tesla. I'm lucky. It's just you can detach it from the pump site, but my CGM stays in. So I actually use something called a co band, or like, vet wrap, and it's basically, it's almost like a tensor bandage that I just wrap around wherever my CGM and my pump side are, and it helps us so they don't get ripped out while I'm competing. Kind

Scott Benner 29:51
of makes it feel like it's part of you, so it can't get pulled on. Yeah, and then do you so you're disconnecting. So do you have the ball? Let's be for you disconnect. I'm trying to decide if the anaerobic, anaerobic things cancel each other out, or if you get high from muscleing or low from movement while you're while you're doing this.

Elizabeth 30:14
So that's actually the fun part. It can go in any which way. There's were

Scott Benner 30:19
you saying fun sarcastically. Elizabeth, yes, okay, yes, very much. All right,

Elizabeth 30:26
but I actually so for competitions, we do actually bullish thing between my matches. So on a good day, I'll have between like four and six matches maybe. So there can be between like five to 10 minutes, or like, three hours between those matches. It kind of depends on the bracket and what happens in the matches, but I always I'm giving small, like units between like one and three every hour or so to keep myself level. But I'm also pairing that with drinking, like my Powerade and having, like, some protein while I'm waiting for my fights, that'll that helps me sustain longer, but the insulin keeps me from going too high.

Scott Benner 31:11
Okay, I see, so see, it's a pretty involved thing for you. So how long does like it the match you said maybe is like four minutes, but then they're sitting around, then you roll again. Or do you roll once a day? Or how does that work?

Elizabeth 31:24
So that depends on how many people you have in your category. For me, I don't usually have more than, like six, so I'll have usually, like five fights in a

Scott Benner 31:33
day. Okay, spread out over how much time I'm sorry, five fights over, that depends.

Elizabeth 31:37
So if I win and I win and I win and I continue to just win, the matches will be fairly close together, but if I win and then I lose one, then I drop down to the rep a charge, which is the bronze medal bracket, and then I have to wait quite a while before those matches actually start. So it can be between like an hour, or it can be between like three hours. You

Scott Benner 31:59
have, like, a little kitchen worth of supplies with you when you go every time. Oh, yeah.

Elizabeth 32:04
Sometimes. I also have younger siblings, right? So we have lots of snacks and stuff for them. Oh, they

Scott Benner 32:09
also are into judo. Yep, my whole family is actually, oh, really, no kidding. You go over there, like, like, The Incredibles, but for Judo, yeah, yeah, I have a question that I feel like you're going to answer in an unsatisfying way, but why are you so mature and smart? Well,

Elizabeth 32:27
I mean, I try to be I'm also the oldest of four kids, so I help look after them as much as I can, and then, like diabetes, right? So I have to be a little bit more mature and able to be able to handle that by myself.

Scott Benner 32:42
So yeah, but that's not, that's not a real answer. Hold on a second. Like, are your are your parents? Like, are they, like, super special, calm people. Were you raised really? Well? Are you making up for something like, what's like? You're uncommonly together for your age. Do you know that about your skin? Well, you're very welcome. But do you know that about yourself?

Elizabeth 33:04
I mean, I've had some people tell me that I'm quite mature for my age. And I'm like, Oh, thank you. I tried always been like that. I definitely was not when I was young. I was I was a little rascal. I was a wild child, actually. So

Scott Benner 33:17
you just said rascal. I feel like we're 75 together. You're fantastic. You're like dating. It'll ruin judo. No. Hold on. You're really interesting to hear because so here, here begs the question, right? When you're diagnosed with type one, do your parents help you with it a lot, or do they just give it to you? Is it a mix.

Elizabeth 33:40
So in the beginning, they helped me a lot, specifically my mom. She she was like, right there. She was like, she held my hand through a lot of the things where I just didn't understand at the time. But over the past couple years, they've given me a lot more, like control with it, and now I primarily do most of the things, although I'm grateful because at competition, my parents are there to help me out when I'm like, running around like a headless chick, and I'm like, Where's where's my belt? Where's this? And my mom was like, take some insulin. And I'm like, it's, it's a really nice reminder when she's there.

Scott Benner 34:13
Nice. Okay, so it started off them, and it transferred to you slowly, and over the last couple of years it's been mostly you, but they still help.

Speaker 1 34:21
Yes, yeah, all right,

Scott Benner 34:24
it's not answering my question, though. I'm trying to figure out, why are you good in school? You get, like, really good grades.

Elizabeth 34:31
I mean, I'm not exceptional. I'm not like a 90s student, but I'm like a fair 80s average kind of person, okay,

Scott Benner 34:38
above average grades, not fantastic. I would say that's just average, but Okay, does it come to you easily, or do you have to work to get to where you're at with your grades? School

Elizabeth 34:50
is not my forte. Test taking is not where it's at. I definitely have to work hard and study lots like all the time to get the kind of grades that I want. I. Even then it's still, it's still really hard. What

Scott Benner 35:01
do you want to do after school? Like the are you going to go to what they call University?

Elizabeth 35:05
Yes, actually, I have been accepted to the University of Alberta in a psychology major. Oh, look

Scott Benner 35:11
at you. I was going to say, what do you want to go for? But there you've answered the question, something you've always been interested

Elizabeth 35:17
in, not originally, originally. I was like, I want to be a doctor, like my parents, like, I'm going to be a doctor. And then, kind of, as I kept growing up, I was like, I don't know what kind of doctor I want to be, maybe this kind, maybe this kind. And then I got diabetes, and I was like, I'm going to be an endocrinologist. Like, Heck, yeah, I am. And then slowly, for sure, I was like, hmm, Kinesiology is cool. Maybe physiotherapy. And then I was like, You know what? No psychology.

Scott Benner 35:43
You're just bouncing around. You don't, you don't, you know, I have to tell you, I just this summer, I've really come to think, like, just how ridiculous it is that we ask 17 year old kids to pick a thing that they're going to do for the rest of their life. It just doesn't, I mean, I understand why you got to get going. You know what I mean? Like, I'm with all that. It's just such an odd thing. Like, how are you supposed to know, you know what I mean,

Elizabeth 36:09
preaching to the choir, man, yeah.

Scott Benner 36:11
And also, you're somehow, like a little mix of a hippie and an old lady at the same time. How did that happen? You know what I'm saying, don't you?

Unknown Speaker 36:23
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 36:25
Does it freak you out when a person who doesn't know you can talk to you for half an hour and start like thinking about who you are?

Elizabeth 36:32
No, no. I mean, I'm not a very like I mean, I would say I'm a little bit introverted when I used to meet most people, but I'm a fairly chatty kind of outgoing person in general. So it is what it is, yeah?

Scott Benner 36:44
But you, you have, like, a, I don't know your vibe is interesting. It's like, upbeat, but old soul, but not crunchy. Does that all make sense? Yeah? Yeah.

Elizabeth 36:57
I'll take the compliment. I'll take

Scott Benner 36:58
it. Listen. Whoever you are is a compliment, as far as I'm concerned, but it's just your mixture is interesting. That's all. What do you like to do, besides judo, so I'm big

Elizabeth 37:08
into, actually, just like physical activity in general. I love, like, mountain biking. I used to be a dancer, so I love dance, just being outside, pretty much just kind of my vibe. But I also do love art, um, I love drawing kind of, kind of anything like that. Okay,

Scott Benner 37:23
so solitary. You like more solitary endeavors.

Elizabeth 37:27
On occasion, I like doing these things, like, with people, like, I'll go and I'll bike with some friends or with my parents, or, like, we'll go on a bike ride with my dog, because I have a lovely little Australian Shepherd.

Scott Benner 37:39
It's interesting though, like, because I guess maybe a lot of stuff is like that. I was gonna say, like, you're doing group activities, but they're singularly focused. Once you're involved in them, you could kind of say that about judo too, honestly, that's what I'm saying. But I think everything's kind of like that. Though, if you stop and really think about it, like, how many things are you actually holding hands with somebody while you're doing? You know what? I mean?

Elizabeth 37:59
Sure true. Maybe, I

Scott Benner 38:00
think I might have just out thought myself in a circle, and then when I got to the end, I was like, oh, dummy, that's how that works. Do your siblings, your younger siblings, know anything about the diabetes?

Elizabeth 38:10
So I have three younger brothers, two of which are, like, fairly young. One of them just turns five this August. The other one is seven. Oh, so, oh, oh,

Scott Benner 38:20
that's right, your parents are, it's a second marriage for your mom, right? Yeah,

Elizabeth 38:24
yeah. Those are my half brothers, yeah. And then I have my other brother who actually lives with his biological father, and he just turned 16. He turned 15. You have

Scott Benner 38:34
a half brother that lives with his biological father, but that's also your biological father.

Elizabeth 38:38
Not quite. Hold on, my mom give birth to me and my brother? Yeah, and he is 15. He lives with our bio dad, okay, but I live with my mom and my step dad and my two half brothers. I

Scott Benner 38:49
got it, okay, okay. I thought there was, like, I misunderstood for a second. Don't worry about okay, so they're not totally they're they're younger, really, is the answer. What's the kids you live

Elizabeth 39:00
with? They're goofballs. And sometimes when I'm sitting there and I'm like, Guys, just like, leave me alone. Leave me alone, they'll be gone. They'll come over and be like, Lizzy, what are your blood sugars? You're being grumpy. I'm like, Guys, yeah, there's, there's silly little goofballs. It's

Scott Benner 39:15
nice. Wait till they get bigger, they'll be silly big goofballs. Oh, definitely. So okay, so after this university psychology, but you're gonna keep I mean, Judo stays in your life for

Elizabeth 39:28
sure. Yeah, definitely, definitely okay.

Scott Benner 39:31
Is it a thing that you recognize that one day, physically, you won't be able to do or do you think you just do it with a little less gusto as you get older so you can continue?

Elizabeth 39:40
I think anything is possible. My stepdad is over 40, and he still competes interprovincially and wins golds and competes internationally and wins medals. So I think I can go for as long as possible, do this

Scott Benner 39:54
every weekend, like every weekend, you get up on Saturday morning and go off to a to an event. So

Elizabeth 39:59
we. Of our trainings, they're weekly. We have three times a week, but our competition season, well, most of our competition season just actually finished after we had nationals, which was about two weeks ago. A little more than that, maybe three. But we probably have about a competition, maybe two a month. And we also have mandatory monthly trainings with the provincial coach.

Scott Benner 40:23
How does this translate into real life? Like, let's say you're, you're out walking, and a lumberjack that smells like maple syrup comes up behind you and tries to take your purse, right? Like, how do you how do you? Like, how do you fight him off with what you know from judo? So

Elizabeth 40:43
again, it's like Judo is the use of your own body mechanics and then manipulating the body mechanics of your opponent, right? So if he's going to come and he's going to reach for my purse, I'm simply just going to grab his wrist and I'm going to turn and throw him, because he's going to be going forwards towards me. So I'm just continuing his momentum, this lovely lumberjack momentum. Yeah, I'm barely doing anything. Honestly, I'm just influencing this momentum. Just a temp, okay,

Scott Benner 41:07
so he comes up to you. He's like, Oh, hey, I'm gonna take your purse a and buy beer. And then you're like, you wait for him to come at you, or you, oh, yeah, well, you would run first, right? Like, you'd be like, I could probably outrun this like, like, like, because he's got syrup on his hands, he'll probably slip and so like, like, but you would, but if you got stuck, you wouldn't attack, you'd wait for the attack. Is that correct? That

Elizabeth 41:30
depends really, if he's coming at me and his if he's coming at me first, and I'm like, well, he's coming at me, time to react to his acting. But if he's there and he's like, oh, like, I'm gonna take your purse, but he's just, like, standing there, and there's not really anything happened, I'm not gonna go for an outright fight. But again, if he, if he comes at me, like he's going to do something, I'm going to take the first move in terms of defending myself.

Scott Benner 41:54
And is this so all in is this also just so ingrained in who you are that even if they took you by surprise, you would react, like, reasonably appropriately.

Elizabeth 42:05
I mean, I would hope so, but like a competition. But

Scott Benner 42:09
what happens, like in your house, if somebody comes around the corner and they're like, boo, are you just like, you already have a hold of them and you're moving them? Do you know what I mean? Or like, how quickly does your body go to that like, that memory, that muscle memory.

Elizabeth 42:22
Have you ever heard the quote, fight or flight, that I'm a flightless bird?

Scott Benner 42:26
Okay, so you're right into it. That's kind of

Elizabeth 42:29
the quote that I try to live by.

Scott Benner 42:31
If you didn't have judo, what do you think you would do with all this energy? Because it feels to me like you have extra energy and that, like, expelling just some aggression and tactile or tactical, like, ideas, seems like it's really good for you. Like, where do you think it would go, though, without this?

Elizabeth 42:50
Honestly, I'm, I'm not too sure. I think Judo has really gave me a level head in terms of just, like, being like a good person. Because, like, I think with more free time, there would have been more chance for me to get into trouble, do things I'm not supposed to, you know, like, go drinking, go partying, which is why I appreciate you, though, because it, like, it kept that level head. It kept me focused on a goal. My goal was winning nationals, and it and I wanted, like, constant improvement. Do

Scott Benner 43:19
you think that that's who you are, though? Do you think like, if, if, somehow, if this man doesn't come into your life and say, Hey, you guys should try judo? Do you think you're out there just like drunk? Elizabeth,

Elizabeth 43:31
I'd like to say that. No, I don't think that's me, but I honestly have no idea where my life would have taken me without something as as moral compass, like as judo. Interesting? Are you religious? No, not really.

Scott Benner 43:46
Is this your religion?

Elizabeth 43:48
I would say Judo is my religion. I would say that, okay,

Scott Benner 43:52
I'm interested because I don't drink as an example. But I think if you I don't, I don't imagine, I can't imagine, what would move me in that direction, like even if my life got bad, I don't think that that's a direction I would go into, because I wonder if you're not giving yourself enough credit for who you are, is what I was wondering,

Elizabeth 44:12
potentially. But I think without my step dad being in my life as well, it would have changed me a lot as a person. Sure, I really look up to him, and I really aspire to be a person as awesome and cool and sophisticated as he is. Wow, so not even just Judo itself, but him not being in my life definitely would have made me a different person.

Scott Benner 44:32
So I don't want to I don't want to discount that. I just want to say that I think it would be okay to give yourself some like credit, like that. You wouldn't be like a person out there, like, just a ne'er do well, like, you know, skulking around in the shadows, breaking car windows and stuff like that. I just don't, doesn't sound to me like that's who you would be. What about him specifically? Are you so reverent about like, what is he? How does he appear to you? If you had to describe him to me? Would you say about him?

Elizabeth 45:00
Well, first and foremost, he is an amazing like judoka. He is incredible at the sport that he does. He holds, like, international titles and like several competitions, and it's like, Whoa. That is awesome. He is, like, a well established man who, like, works in the medical field, and he's good at his job, and he's just like a goofy, outgoing guy, but he also can be like stoic and like reserved, and he's just got so many different contrasts and different angles to him that are so unique and so interesting, and it makes him just a really awesome person as well. He really stepped up as a father figure in my life for a number of my elementary school kind of years. So I really, I really look up to him like that.

Scott Benner 45:45
Yeah, no, I imagine that's lovely. Your mom. She's just okay. I

Elizabeth 45:49
love my mom. I have I share such a special bond with my mom. She is my number one fan. She is my go to girl. She's not just my mom, she's also like my best friend. And it's like the best relationship I could have asked for. Wow,

Scott Benner 46:02
what's the worst thing you've ever thought in your head about another person?

Elizabeth 46:06
There was a girl I was competing against, and I I had won against her several a year before, but in the process, I had accidentally broke her collar bone with a throw, and when she came back the next year. She beat me at the same tournament, and then she slandered me all over social media. I was a little bit sour above that.

Scott Benner 46:27
Yeah, sour. You were just a bit sour. Were you? Yeah, so, so you humiliated her. She came back with an eye on getting even she does that, but then she has to go and do something online too.

Elizabeth 46:43
Yeah, that is disappointing a little bit. It's okay. My, my sweet moment of revenge was I beat her at nationals to win the gold.

Scott Benner 46:54
Oh, look at you. You got her back eventually, eventually, it took a little while I got there. Did you whisper anything in her ear while you were, like, choking her out or whatever you were doing there,

Elizabeth 47:03
no no that the drill maps, the tatamis where you are competing is almost as is a sacred place. Oh, you can't there was no disrespect there. You can't

Scott Benner 47:14
whisper. I wouldn't have put that on Instagram if I was you while you were, like, making her rethink her life. No,

Elizabeth 47:20
no, okay, in a match. One, you can't talk because you'll get in trouble. And two, it is, it is incredibly difficult for a person to come out and compete in front of a huge stadium for like a like a national title, so I do my best, even if I despise someone I'm fighting with every fiber of my being, I'm never going to disrespect them in a tournament match. I will never, even though

Scott Benner 47:49
go I'm sorry, even though she was disrespectful to you, you wouldn't consider being a being disrespectful back to her. Just you'll just try to beat her. And if you can good, and if not, then, okay.

Elizabeth 47:59
Yeah, exactly. Wow.

Scott Benner 48:03
Geez. Are, like, are people in your town, like, lining up trying to get you to marry their son? No, no, no, they're missing out. I would, I would definitely, if I had a 17 year old son, I'd be definitely pushing him towards you right now. I'd be like, Elizabeth, here, meet my kid. No, yeah, you're, you're, you're special. I would actually, if anything horrible happens to your parents, I might adopt you. So let me know if you need anything. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 48:27
thank you. No, you'd

Scott Benner 48:29
be good respect. I you listen. You'd make me look good. That's what I'm thinking. Get it? I mean, they'd be like, Oh my god, Elizabeth, right. I'm like, Hey, I know I taught her a lot. That's what I would say. Like, behind your back. I take a lot of credit for you. Well, listen, as a person who slander is a tough word, because it because I don't know if I would say that, but I've been slandered before. It's very it's infuriating, like it really is, because it goes beyond somebody's opinion, like, I don't mind if people don't like me. I fully almost expect that I don't care if people don't like me, and they tell their people they don't like me, that even makes sense to me, but making something up because it's hurtful and because you think it will damage somebody or make you feel better, or whatever. Like, I have a real difficult time with that, and I never, even though I have the ability to and a platform to do it on, I don't strike back in a way that would damage somebody, and I could, and I've been brought to the brink of it a couple of times, but I've never actually done it. So I applaud you, because it's difficult, and I'm an adult, and I still sat down and wrote something out just to delete it the other day because somebody in a public setting lied about me in front of a bunch of other people, and I could have and I know a thing about them that they did directly, that I was aware of this part. Person's actions are just so despicable, and they try so hard not to to look they try very hard to look like that's not who they can be. And I don't know them well enough to tell you that's who they are every second of the day, but I've seen them be like that a number of times I have like and I could have outed them, and it would have been really damaging to them, and I didn't do it, but it's the closest I've ever come to doing it. So I know how difficult it is to, like, pull yourself back, and you seem very much more mature than I am actually with your answer. But anyway, I want to give you a lot of credit for that, because it would be easy to strike back, you know,

Elizabeth 50:39
thank you.

Scott Benner 50:40
Thank you, of course, good for you. I don't understand still, you're an alien, right? You were dropped here. You're watching us from Mars or something, and you're trying to, like, blend in. What's going on exactly? I still don't buy this. Why you're so nice. You don't do anything terrible. You ever kick a dog? No, no, what? No,

Elizabeth 50:57
I have a dog. I love dogs.

Scott Benner 51:01
Okay? I didn't think so. You ever stick gum under a desk? No, you would never do that. Would you? No, do you take your shoes off when you come into somebody else's house? Yes, get the out of here, really? Oh, my God. Do

Elizabeth 51:15
you curse on occasion?

Scott Benner 51:17
What's your favorite curse word? Say it now, unburden yourself. It'll get believed. So whatever you say, no one's gonna know what you

Speaker 1 51:24
said. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. Oh, my God.

Scott Benner 51:34
Seriously, like, what's you do? You have a go. What are you? You're walking through. Here you go. You're walking through the room, you don't have any shoes on, and you kick something and you yell, is it? No,

Elizabeth 51:49
damn. You're gonna laugh at me for this one. I would I would stub my toe, and I would say, Mother of all, that is holy.

Scott Benner 51:57
Is that a curse? No, it's just what I would say. But you're also not religious, no, but you would never say Jesus Christ if something bad happened. Oh, no, I definitely say that one. That one you say, okay, all right. Have you ever said Christ on a cracker? I love that one.

Unknown Speaker 52:16
I'm sorry.

Scott Benner 52:17
What you've never heard that?

Elizabeth 52:19
No, it's now in my arsenal. Now, wait, wait,

Scott Benner 52:22
wait, hold on a second. We have a question to be I don't know where that came from. Let's find the etymology of Hold on a second. What is the etymology

Unknown Speaker 52:34
of Christ on a cracker?

Scott Benner 52:39
The phrase Christ on a cracker, is an exclamation used to express surprise, disbelief, frustration, or exasperation, is considered a euphemism to avoid using more explicit or blasphemous language, substituting a mild or less offensive expression while still conveying strong emotions. Christ refers, of course, to Jesus. Christ, central to Christianity, etc. On a cracker, this part of the phrase adds a touch of absurdity and humor, making the expression less offensive than outright blasphemy. It also suddenly refers a Christian practice of communion. That's what I thought, too, where bread symbolizes the body of Christ, overall. Christ on a cracker serves as a colorful and emphatic way to express strong reaction. Please go to that one the next time you stub your toe, okay, I will. And if people say, What did you just say, Go. I learned that on a podcast. I would please tell people that was, by the way, our chat GPT Overlord, who gave us that breakdown of the etymology of Christ on the cracker. Lovely, yeah. Also, I was typing and not looking completely missed on Etymology and chat, G, P, T, still knew what I was asking, so be aware it's coming for you and me. So psychology, you find people interesting. Why they do things interesting? You want to help them feel better. What's the also? I don't think this is what you're gonna end up doing. I think you're gonna change like, 17 more times, but what interests you about it?

Elizabeth 54:03
So actually, we had a Japanese exchange student come and stay with us for a little while. He also did judo, so he was staying with us and training with us at our club, and he was actually doing his studies in sports psychology, and I found it really interesting. And I was like, hmm, that seems like a really cool profession. And then another of the gentleman at our club, he also him and his wife. I'm good friends with his kid, him and his wife. They're both sports psychologists. I was like, I was talking to him about it. He was like, yeah, like, it's really cool. Like, this the kind of stuff you do. I was like, but I also, I have, I have a soft spot for kids, since my brothers are awesome sauce, but I definitely would go into either sports psychology or child psychology. Elizabeth, every

Scott Benner 54:48
time you talk, I just assume you're not a real person. You're so kind and lovely, and everything you say, I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing.

Unknown Speaker 54:57
Thank you. Seriously,

Scott Benner 54:58
you. I'm like, What the hell is happening? All right? Well, terrific. Let's make sure. Did let's go back and make sure. Did we talk about or not talk about anything that you wanted to Did I miss anything? That's my first question, Not particularly, no. Did you cover things that you were hoping to talk about? The other

Elizabeth 55:19
thing we didn't really talk about was there's something I do called intermittent fasting.

Scott Benner 55:24
Oh, I would like to talk about that. I've done that in the past. Go ahead, tell me, yeah.

Elizabeth 55:29
So the diabetes clinic actually does not like it when I do intermittent fasting, but so the way that they like to or how I've perceived the way that they like to help manage, like a diabetic blood sugar, is the constant use of like food and like sustenance, because, like with food, you can give more insulin and so on so forth. But I found that an important aspect of participating in judo, like to maintain weight and just increase my overall performance, has to do with the intermittent fasting on non tournament days, I try to refrain from eating for around 16 hours each day, sometimes 18. This gives me a chance to focus on like my background and my basal insulin and generally keeps my blood sugars at like a more steady rate on the days where I don't fast, which is usually just like my competition days, or the days where I have, like, like those post tournament training camps, I usually start the day off with some protein and, like, liquids, and I stay light on the heavy carbs, because those are what spike my blood sugar really bad, and then it just kind of stays up for when I'm doing judo for the rest of the day. Instead, I eat those heavier carbs later at night to help rebuild any muscles that I might have broken down a bit during the day, and those carbs actually helped me maintain my blood sugar better overnight on competition days as well. Why would your doctors have a problem with that? They just don't like the fact that I'm only eating about two meals a day. What's

Scott Benner 56:59
your a 1c

Elizabeth 56:59
my a 1c right now is, I think it's around seven.

Scott Benner 57:04
And what's your variability like? Do you bounce? Do you get over 180 very often? Well, no, hold on a second. You're in Canada. Sorry about that. Give me a second. Juicebox podcast, calm a 1c and blood glucose calculator. Type in. You got to get a plug in once in a while. You know what I mean, put in 180 so 10, right? You get above 10 very often.

Elizabeth 57:26
Sometimes I find that when I'm fasting, I actually don't get above 10 very often. I honestly stay lower about where, on a good day, when I wake up in the morning and my blood sugars are around six, I tend to hover between like six and like four

Scott Benner 57:41
Okay, so like between 70 and 110 that's really great. So yeah, and you don't have a ton of variability. Do you know what your do? You happen to know what your, oh, God, simple phrase just fell out of my head. A standard deviation is my standard of deviation. Do you know that you have you ever go into your Dexcom clarity app and look at your standard deviation.

Elizabeth 58:03
Yes. I mean, I haven't done it recently, but I have. Usually I stay between about six and, like, eight, nine.

Scott Benner 58:10
Really, I don't know what, why didn't All right, what is,

Unknown Speaker 58:16
I don't understand. Like, do you think

Scott Benner 58:18
it's just one of those situations where that's like, that's just how they do it. They don't know how to support you. Maybe

Elizabeth 58:23
they also told me, like in the past, or whatever. So I've also gone to, like, diabetes camp and stuff like that. Again, they use food to help manage, like, blood sugar. So they recommend eating like breakfast, a breakfast snack, lunch, like an afternoon snack, and then evening snack, and then, like, dinner, and then, like, a bedtime snack.

Scott Benner 58:43
So they're feeding people on such a schedule that they don't have an opportunity to get low. Yeah, yeah,

Elizabeth 58:49
which I struggle with, because in tournaments, like, we have to, like, weigh in for our competition, so we're fighting people roughly our size. Like, that's why I do the intermittent fasting. It helps me maintain, like, a healthy weight and sit at the spot where I want to be at. Yeah, I'll be, Damn It's upsetting,

Scott Benner 59:06
isn't it, that they can't just kind of meet you where you are and see that you're having success and try to support that.

Elizabeth 59:11
I mean, I see, I see why they don't, why they're like, why they recommend that I should be eating more. It works for me, so I'm going to continue to do it? No,

Scott Benner 59:21
you should. Does it make you feel bad? That's my worry for you. Seems so goddamn nice. Like, do you like? Do you sit there and feel badly about what you're doing? Not at all good. Yeah, you got a spine for that stuff. Seriously, you you have a you have a resilience that you said you used to work grit earlier, if you knew that or not, because I was busy going, I don't know why a 17 year old knows the word grit, but, but do you feel like is that A is that a central part of your personality, like that resilience?

Elizabeth 59:50
I would say I think so. Like being a diabetic and someone who does judo and like a female and someone who's like, had like a. Rough childhood, or whatever you want to call it like I think, I think resilience is a pretty good way to I mean, I'm still here, right? So

Scott Benner 1:00:07
tell me how your childhood was rough.

Elizabeth 1:00:09
My parents divorced when I was about two and a half after they had my my brother, so I spent a lot of time going back and forth between the houses, and there was some conflict there, as well as some like Anim. I don't want to say animosity, because that's the strong word, but there was definitely some conflict between the houses. So when my mom started dating and when she got married again, my dad was mad and this and that, and it was like a constant band here between the two households. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:00:35
that makes sense. Okay, so the divorce is where you feel like you had your first opportunity, where you kind of could have gone backwards a little bit like something could have happened to you, but you didn't like you kept going in the direction that you went, and even though you don't have, like, a firm feeling for where you want to go in life after this, which we both agree, is not something you should probably even know when you're 17. But does that feel like an unknown to you? Like I would say, Yeah, and you deal with it by knowing what it's going to be okay.

Elizabeth 1:01:09
I think I deal with it knowing that even if I don't know where I'm going right now, like my this is going to sound corny, but the adventure towards where I'm gonna end up is one of the best things, right?

Scott Benner 1:01:25
It doesn't sound corny. It sounds like you're 46 and you're fan and you've been through a little bit of but you really understand life.

Elizabeth 1:01:35
I try. Has

Scott Benner 1:01:36
anything really horrifying ever happened in your life? Have you ever lost someone or anything that we would like think of as traumatic as ever happened to you, beyond the divorce.

Elizabeth 1:01:47
Well, I mean, three years ago or three years ago, yeah, this October, my my uncle, so my mom's brother, her little brother, he, he passed away unexpectedly. Obviously, yeah, that that hit my entire family, including me, like a semi truck. Him and my mom were really close. I was also really close with him. We would talk almost all the time. We spent a lot of time together. So that was that was a devastating blow to our entire family.

Scott Benner 1:02:21
How did you guys traverse that?

Elizabeth 1:02:23
It was tough. I think we're still going through a couple of the ripples of the aftermath and stuff like that. I tried my best to stay strong for my mom, because it was, it was her little brother, and I could not imagine losing one of my little brothers, sure. So I just, I tried to stay strong for her and support her any way I knew I could. Definitely went and talked to some people as well. You

Scott Benner 1:02:46
went to therapy, yeah, but then the focus is on being supportive for your mom, like that, doing it for her, like, you'll be strong for someone else. Yes. Do you think she did that for you in return?

Elizabeth 1:02:58
Yeah, probably it's kind of in her nature. Like, that's where I got it from.

Scott Benner 1:03:02
I have a central belief that if people who love each other put each other first, that a lot of things take care of themselves.

Elizabeth 1:03:08
Does that make sense? Yeah, like,

Scott Benner 1:03:11
like, if I'm here for you before me, and you're here for me before you, then we all are supported, and we all feel like we have a like, a greater purpose within our structure, and then it kind of blends out a lot of the problems that come with selfishness and and feeling alone.

Elizabeth 1:03:31
Yeah, that's a really nice way to look at it. Thank

Scott Benner 1:03:33
you. It's a high minded idea I have that I'm not sure that I live up to. Hmm, now that you and I have spoken, do you like me more or less?

Elizabeth 1:03:44
I like you a lot. You're a fun guy. We're

Scott Benner 1:03:48
gonna call this episode Canadian fungus, because I'm a because I'm a fun guy and and you're Canadian, of course, or the Alberta surprise, although that sounds weird, I don't maybe you're you're too young for me to tell you what I thought that sounded like. So maybe we should. We're not gonna say that. Thank God you told me you were 17 before we started, because I knew to like I wasn't sure you come off so adult that I would never in my life have guessed you were 17 if you wouldn't

Elizabeth 1:04:19
have told me. Seriously, that's what I'm aiming for. That's what we're aiming for.

Scott Benner 1:04:22
Why are you aiming for that? Tell me that

Elizabeth 1:04:24
I want to be mature. I want people to go to depend on me and look to me for advice. I want to be there as a good friend and a good person. So I feel like being mature is a good way to start that process. All right. Well, we're

Scott Benner 1:04:36
going to stop the recording here so everyone listening can go off on their day and feel like they are letting someone down compared to you. Seriously, it's not the intent. There are going to be adults all over the world walking around today going, I'm not trying as hard as a 17 year old girl from Alberta. I really got to pull it together. There are also some people who are hoping you end up in prison. I just want you to know that. Oh, okay. They're like, let's see this girl fall in her face. Wait. Oh, something really goes wrong. But yeah, I know I I'm, My money's on you. Elizabeth, thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna put all my loonies, and I think I have four of them here on my desk somewhere. I do, by the way, do I have I somebody sent me Canadian money with the, like, the diabetes, like commemorative stuff on it. Did you do you know that that happened, like, a year or two ago? Yeah? Yeah, I

Elizabeth 1:05:27
have a couple loonies like that. They are loonies because

Scott Benner 1:05:29
I forget if I'm just using the word because I think it's funny, or because they're actually loonies, they might be loonies. They're my desk somewhere. Go through all the Canadian money. Loony, what else is there? Too many quarter I don't know, dime, nickel. Why, in God's name, would they make it Looney and toonie?

Elizabeth 1:05:45
I don't know they're fun. I think it's based off of a Loon, like the bird, but it's like Loon is in one and then toonie, because it's two, $2 Wait,

Scott Benner 1:05:55
is that seriously? A loony is a bird, but a toonie just means two. Loon

Elizabeth 1:06:00
is the type of duck. Go ahead it, yeah, it's just a type of duck. You're like, that shit. Scott, that's

Scott Benner 1:06:07
the whole story. Oh, my God. Have you ever had a Tim bit I have, yeah, and are they any good?

Elizabeth 1:06:19
They taste like bite sized donut pieces. Gotcha. So

Scott Benner 1:06:22
it's nothing special. The chocolate ones, though, are really good. Do you feel controlled by the Queen?

Elizabeth 1:06:29
No, no. We just celebrated our, like, 100 and 52nd year of independence, didn't we? I

Scott Benner 1:06:33
know, but I sometimes I feel like Canadians sometimes have a little bit of that, like, bad feeling left? No,

Elizabeth 1:06:40
I don't think so you

Scott Benner 1:06:41
don't give a crap. Do you? I like you a lot. Sorry. Elizabeth, thanks. All right, I'm gonna go make a baby right now and try to grow it up to be your age, and then I'm gonna send it over to you, because I'd like to see what you could do for it. I also want to point out to my own children that you're not trying hard enough. And Elizabeth is the absolute seriously. You're not even corny.

Elizabeth 1:07:03
You should I'm a little bit corny. No,

Scott Benner 1:07:05
but Elizabeth, you should be, let me be listen. You want to speak. You want to hear some truth right now? Yes, hit me with some truth. You should come off much cornier than you do and you don't, which means it's like it feels authentic. You're freaking me out. I just want you to know that, are your parents freaked out by you? Like, is there a world like, it would have made me feel better if your parents were, like, functioning day drinkers, and they were like, I don't know where she came from, but it feels like they're decent people too, like your staff. You know what I mean? My parents are great. They're great, I know, and I feel like, if they weren't, you'd tell me, right? Yeah, or you talk around it, you would talk around it at least, yeah, like, if your parents weren't really decent people, you wouldn't say that they are would you like, I wouldn't lie about it, right? But you would stay away from it if, seriously, if your mom was a heroin addict, you wouldn't have told me today. Yeah, probably not. I know. I know that about you. I feel like I know you Okay. All right, Elizabeth, you were beyond terrific. I really appreciate you doing this and reaching out. I have to be honest with you, when somebody was like, I want to come on and talk about judo, I was like, oh god, that's gonna be so boring. But okay, and then it wasn't, it was really amazing. So thank you so much. Yeah,

Elizabeth 1:08:22
thank you for having me honestly. This is like a fantastic experience, and I'm really glad that I got this opportunity. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:08:28
I'm glad you feel that way, but, and I believe you, because I know you wouldn't lie to me,

Elizabeth 1:08:36
what was your favorite curse again? What did you say? Mother of all, that is holy.

Scott Benner 1:08:44
But the next time you you stub your toe, you're gonna say, Christ on a cracker. That's right, it's Oh, Christ on a cracker, just like that. And then when people look at you, just go, I learned that on a podcast. Okay, yes, sir. All right, Captain, you're fantastic. Feel free to ask to come back on the show, like when college is over. Okay? Oh, thank you. I would love, I would love to hear how college went for you as a matter of fact. No, don't thank me. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna make a note here for myself. Keep the podcast going for at least five more years so you can hear what Elizabeth did in college. There. You're no no, but I want you to have time to, like, settle in and feel, you know, like reminiscent and everything I am, you're you're now my reason to go on. Thank you very much.

Elizabeth 1:09:30
No, thank you. Seriously,

Scott Benner 1:09:31
hold on one second. You're fantastic.

A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon. Find out more about G vo hypo pen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash Juicebox. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, for. Forward slash juice box. The conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, box. Or call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, one year one CGM, that's today's sponsor, the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at ever since cgm.com/juicebox, and you may be eligible to receive the system for $199 for a full year. There's more details about eligibility at my link, if you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective the bold beginning series from the Juicebox podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698, in your podcast player, or you can go to Juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app like Spotify or Apple podcasts. Please do that now. Seriously, just to hit follow or subscribe will really help the show. If you go a little further in Apple podcast and set it up so that it downloads all new episodes, I'll be your best friend, and if you leave a five star review, ooh, I'll probably send you a Christmas card. Would you like a Christmas card? The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way recording.com, you.

#1361 After Dark: Stand Up Mixer

Natalie overcame addiction and diabetes struggles to now lead a healthy, stable life.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.

On today's episode, I'll be speaking with Natalie in this after dark. She's 40 years old now, but she was diagnosed with type one diabetes in her teens. At this moment, she's recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, and this is her story. 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. 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 when you place your first order for ag one, with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink. Ag one.com/juice box. If you are the caregiver of someone with type one diabetes or have type one yourself, please go to T 1d exchange.org/juice, box and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes, and will really help type one diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T 1d exchange.org/juicebox, exchange.org/juice, box.

Dexcom sponsored this episode of The Juicebox podcast. Learn more about the Dexcom g7 at my link, dexcom.com/juicebox, today's podcast is sponsored by touched by type one. Check them out on Facebook, Instagram and at touched by type one.org. If you're looking for an organization who's helping people with type one diabetes, you're looking for touch by type one. Hi. My

Natalie 1:57
name is Natalie. I am a type one diabetes, 40 years old, and I am also a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. I guess my story kind of starts back with my mother, who was, I mean, I grew I was born and raised the Phoenix area of Arizona. They'll live here, born and raised in the same household. My dad still actually lives in very stable upbringing. In that sense, when it comes to my diet, diesel, it starts with my mom. She was a type one diabetic, and didn't find out she was a diabetic until she was eight months pregnant with me, and she lost her eyesight, so I immediately was delivered as a C section, and I was also almost 10 pounds that about eight months of pregnancy, my diabetes journey really started from the time I was born. Even though I wasn't technically born with it, I grew up around, you know, eating back in the 80s. You know, you eat the the Sweet and Low, the crystal lights, the diet sodas, everything was a diabetic diet for a whole entire family. So by the time it came around for me to become a diabetic, it really wasn't that much of a change. Can

Scott Benner 3:14
you tell me a little bit about your mom? Like, lost her eyesight for good?

Natalie 3:19
No, no, no. Once her, once her blood sugars got back under control, she gained her eyesight back. Okay, okay,

Scott Benner 3:25
that's what I kind of thought you were getting at, but I wasn't 100%

Natalie 3:29
Yeah, no, she, she got her eyesight back. Um, a little, a little more history with my mom is that she's also an alcoholic, so I grew up with her being in and out of recovery a lot as well, which eventually down the line, which led to her passing from her her alcoholism, which affected, obviously, her diabetes and so, like on her death certificate, complications of diabetes is why she died, but it was a direct reflection of her not taking care of herself.

Scott Benner 3:54
I'm so sorry. I can I ask a question like, do you have more context? Like, so she had type one. It wasn't gestational. I

Natalie 4:03
think it started off as gestational, okay, but she was diagnosed as type one. However, she also never, I think she may have gone to an endocrinologist, from my memory, maybe once for the whole time. I don't think it was much of a thing, or she was just so, so in control most of my life. I remember my mom being in such great control of, you know, giving yourself insulin. She'd have us give her insulin so we knew how to, like, give her shots, and we tested our blood sugars and her blood sugars, and she was super strict about diet and exercise. So she really did take care of herself for most of my life

Scott Benner 4:41
going? Would you consider her like a functioning alcoholic, or was she like a fall down drunk?

Natalie 4:47
I would say she she was more functioning until my parents got divorced. Okay? When my parents got divorced, I would think I was 16, 1516, I was around high. School time, and when my parents got divorced, my my mom completely different person. She's the one who moved out. My dad finished raising me, and so she moved out, and it was just downhill from that. It was just like one extreme to the other. She got into the drugs it was. She was homeless for some time. Every now and then she gets sober again, you know, a slew of bad men constantly, it kind of turned into my sister. My older sister really took the role of being her parent. Unfortunately, she had that burden on her. So me, my mom became a strain for about five years. You know, I was just angry. I was getting through high school. I was with my dad. Was just being my dad for even now, it's mostly just me and my dad.

Scott Benner 5:46
So how old was she when she was pregnant with you? You know, he was 30. Oh, okay, and you're the youngest.

Natalie 5:54
I have the youngest. Yeah, I have a sister that's four years older than me. Okay. And then, how

Scott Benner 5:59
old were you when you were diagnosed?

Natalie 6:00
So here's a funny story, or the weird, the weird part, I don't have an exact like, Hey, this is what happened. You know, I was in DK, you know there was, there's no, like, big event that came with it. It was my mom saw the signs. And I think I was around 11, and growing up, I was a huge dancer. I danced almost every single day dance studios. I was a cheerleader. I was extremely active. And when I was around 11, my mom started, I guess, noticing the signs and the constant being thirsty, the yeast infections, the peeing all the time, and the doctors kind of pushed it off. And I remember going there, and they're like, oh, we'd rather just watch her for a little bit. And then once I got into my teenage years, I got into drugs and partying, and I just, I, of course, I neglected myself, and so I never actually got an an official diagnosis until I was almost 18, okay, and then I didn't take care of myself and actually give myself insulin until I became pregnant, and that's when I decided I should live for something. And I was at 19,

Scott Benner 7:13
about a year later. Hey, did your when you were growing up? Was your mom using in the house? Or is that a thing that happened after she left, or was it happening? And that's why she left

Natalie 7:23
the alcohol, the alcoholism in the house. Like I've never, I never knew my mom to do drugs, except for maybe when I was really, really little. She used to have special cigarettes, which I now know it was weed, but I never saw her like, really do that. It was mostly just the alcohol. It was very dysfunctional behind closed doors, for sure, my mom was a raging alcoholic. It was being woken up in the middle of the night with my mom on top of my dad, with a nice tons of fights. It was running to the bedroom, you know, and hiding from everybody to serve, going crazy trying to break up fights. There was a lot of that that I think I have chosen to probably block out, or I was too young to really understand what was going on at the time, my sister has some crazy stories that she can tell you, but for me, I remember my childhood being mostly good. And I don't know if that's like a defense thing, a mental thing. I don't know what that it is, but most of the memories were good, but I do remember that when mom was bad, she was really bad, and she she was crazy.

Scott Benner 8:33
Does she have any mental illness that you're aware of?

Natalie 8:36
Definitely depression, probably some anxiety thrown in there. Nothing like bipolar or anything that required, I don't know her, to be necessarily, put in a hospital or anything. But as since she's passed, I have found out a lot of serving history, like family history, which has been interesting to find out on her side, on her side, yeah, my mom's an army brat, and so, you know, she grew up all over the place, but my my grandmother is from Australia, and so they lived in Australia. My mom was very young, and just some of the stuff like, I mean, forgive me, grandma, but she was a whole and she has, like, like, random kids places. The reason why she married my grandpa, I guess alcohol, alcoholism runs deep with my grandma, and she was a raging alcoholic as well. Oh, okay, so it runs deep on my mom's side.

Scott Benner 9:34
Are you an alcoholic? No,

Natalie 9:35
I am. I mean, I'm not. I'm I'm recovering alcoholic. Okay, so I was gonna say there's parts of my life where alcoholism was definitely the main focus, you know? I mean, obviously it landed me in jail, got a DUI, but mess was my big thing. I never really did the both. It was either one or the other, either I was off the chain with alcohol or it was. I loved doing that math was my favorite until it got too real.

Scott Benner 10:04
What age did you start with? Well, I guess, what did you what drug did you try first?

Natalie 10:08
Actually, the very first thing I ever tried was acid. Oh yeah, that was the very first thing I ever did. And I think I was 15. I was in ninth grade, so I was around 15. How does that happen? I know I think it was at a party. It was, like, one of my very first parties, okay, that I ever went to, and so I just remember trying it and it was fun, and I never did it again, like, ever again. Like, it was cool, it was fun, like, whatever, like, it was scary to look into me, or, I think being my best friend. Best friend last so much, we literally feed our pants, full experience whatever, no interest in touching it again during that time, though, that my ninth grade year must have been around. That must have been women, parents got divorced, because that's when I really got out of control. I would drink alcohol while I was sitting in class, I would have vodka in my walk model, and I would drink him. I eventually did get caught once, because I took all over the floor inside my school. So I got, you know, suspended for that, and I got kicked off a cheerleading so I'm pretty sure that's the memory that people have of me as the girl or the cheerleader who's her up all over the hallway in ninth grade.

Unknown Speaker 11:24
Geez.

Scott Benner 11:25
You remember this is good? Or you remember like younger years is good? I

Natalie 11:30
remember my younger years as good, you know, I remember my parents being really in love with each other. They would dance together, you know, they would kiss like we did everything together. You know, we took lots of family trips. They were always very supportive. Everybody was always the whole family was always there together to support each other. We'd always have like we were Girl Scouts, and I'm almost a troop leader, but nobody knew what was happening behind closed doors when everybody left

Scott Benner 11:57
those cookies are like crack. So maybe that was, maybe that was her.

Natalie 12:01
Maybe that was really the start of it. Well,

Scott Benner 12:04
okay, do you think looking back now with hindsight, like was the laughing and dancing and kissing like mom and dad were drunk in the living room all the time? Oh,

Natalie 12:13
absolutely. Okay, absolutely, yeah. And when we have these big bonfires in the backyard with the family members, of course there were tons of alcohol, right? Tons of alcohol.

Scott Benner 12:23
Did you feel supported emotionally? Did you like if you needed help with homework or a life problem? Did you feel like they were there for you for

Natalie 12:32
the most part? My mom, my mother, absolutely okay. She was also a huge enabler. Never, ever questioned my parents love for me, I don't think when it came to, let's say issues or big things that happened, we were kind of the family that swept it under the rug. Like, okay, this happened, let's not talk about it later. Like, just get through it, and we just don't talk about it. Like, you're grounded for a week and that's it. We just don't talk

Scott Benner 12:56
about it. Yeah, do you know who initiated their divorce? My

Natalie 13:00
mom would threaten divorce a lot, but my dad finally pulled straw on

Scott Benner 13:03
it. He's like, hey, you know what? Why don't you actually go, yeah? He's like,

Natalie 13:07
Yeah, I'm been doing this for 20 years, like I'm done. Did your

Scott Benner 13:11
dad clean himself up? Or would you call him addicted? Now,

Natalie 13:16
you know, I really, I feel my dad is a functioning alcoholic, like extremely functioning, like my dad is. He drinks a lot, but you won't see him drunk, but you also won't see him without a drink,

Scott Benner 13:32
maybe, like a 12 pack a day kind of thing. Well,

Natalie 13:35
he's a vodka drinker. But yes, okay, yes, he will. He's a bot pi draker, as he's gotten older and his body's hurting, I, for some reason, I feel I have absolutely no proof of this. I feel like there might be pain pills involved. Oh, geez. But my dad will, he's he has pride. He will never admit anything.

Scott Benner 13:56
Did you grow up in poverty? Did you guys have money? Where was your What was it like? Financially?

Natalie 14:02
I would say we were middle class, okay. However, also growing up, my dad, come like my grandparents, or my grandpa was an aerospace engineer, and he used to be vice president of TRW, which is now Boeing, I believe so. My dad grew up very wealthy in the Pacific politics in California, his godmother was vivid and Vance from, and she's Ethel from, I Love Lucy, really. Oh, he grew up, yeah, yeah. He grew up kind of like the a list or lifestyle. We had everything that we needed, and probably most of what we wanted. Looking back on what I also found out is like the reason that we had the house was because our grandparents bought it. You know, the reason why my parents had the cars they did was because my grandparents bought it. So you think your parents grew up poorly. My dad did not, absolutely no, my mom. I mean, my mom was an Army brat, so and there was. Five kids in her family. So, I mean, I don't know how that was. She's never said anything that she lived early or wealthy, never, she didn't talk about the childhood much, actually, yeah,

Scott Benner 15:09
Dexcom g7 offers an easier way to manage diabetes without finger sticks. It is a simple CGM system that delivers real time glucose numbers to your smartphone, your smart watch, and it effortlessly allows you to see your glucose levels and where they're headed. My daughter is wearing a Dexcom g7 right now, and I can't recommend it enough, whether you have commercial insurance, Medicare coverage or no CGM coverage at all, Dexcom can help you. Go to my link, dexcom.com/juicebox, and look for that button that says, Get a free benefits check that'll get you going with Dexcom. When you're there, check out the Dexcom clarity app or the follow. Did you know that people can follow your Dexcom up to 10 people can follow you. Right now, I'm following my daughter, but my wife is also following her. Her roommates at school are following her. So I guess Arden is being followed right now by five people who are concerned for her health and welfare. And you can do the same thing, school, nurses, your neighbor, people in your family, everyone can have access to that information if you want them to have it, or if you're an adult and you don't want anyone to know, you don't have to share with anybody. It's completely up to you. Dexcom.com/juicebox, links in the show notes. Links at Juicebox podcast.com, and when you use my link to learn about Dexcom, you're supporting the podcast. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by touched by type one. Touched by type one.org if you're looking for a great organization to support someone who's supporting people with type one diabetes the way you would like, you're looking for touch by type one, touched by type one.org or find them on Facebook and Instagram. They're long time sponsors of the podcast, and they're out there doing great things for people with type one diabetes. You're 40 now. For 15 minutes, you've explained to me what it was like growing up. If I said to you, how was your upbringing, you'd say I would say I had it better than many. It's interesting. Okay, do you know what the aces are the adverse childhood experience list?

Natalie 17:18
No, I fit into that category. I feel like I felt they would, oh, my God.

Scott Benner 17:22
It feels like they were talking to you and then just wrote down what happened to you and made the list. These are risk factors for childhood development, right? So they're traumatic events or circumstances that could lead to, you know, their risk factors, let's say for you not turning out the way you would hope this is the list chronic stress, so ongoing stresses, whether they're family issues or financial stability, academic pressure, anything like that, that's, you know, anxiety, depression based. I'm going to count growing up with drunks as a stressful abuse or neglect. Were you physically, emotionally or sexually abused? No, you don't think emotional abuse being the child of alcoholics? Probably, yeah, okay, yeah. Probably the next one is parental substance abuse. Growing up with parents who abuse drugs or alcohol, we've got that one so we have stress. We're going to give you parents of substance abuse. Maybe we'll skip over abuse and neglect. But you know, because you get the other one, any domestic violence, you said, yes, your mom would hold a knife on your dad. Yep, losses, poverty, you didn't have lack of parental involvement, like sufficient attention, guidance and support, but like the kind you would want to give a child, not just like they were

Natalie 18:39
there, being there, yeah, they were present. I mean, their physical bodies were present, okay,

Scott Benner 18:45
lack of parental involvement. We got inconsistencies and discipline. And you said there, yes, right? Yes, absolutely. Any mental health issues with your parents.

Natalie 18:56
I know my dad struggled with depression as well as my mom that. I mean, that's all I told about.

Scott Benner 19:03
Well, divorce or separation, you have that one, and then the last one is exposure to crime or violence,

Natalie 19:10
yeah, I guess so, yeah. I mean, if you think about like, when it comes to like, crimes, my parents were, like, the type that would go still, street signs,

Scott Benner 19:19
wait as adults.

Natalie 19:21
Oh yeah, oh yeah. So we lived in this area that wasn't built up yet. I mean, now it's huge in the east valley here, but like, they would put these little I remember specifically in this farmland area I think they were going to be building and they have these street signs of what the street names were going to be. And I remember in we had like, a 1972 station wagon. I don't know why I remember that so well, okay, but I remember being in the back of that station wagon, and my parents driving up next to this field and stealing all these street signs, and then we had them all lined up in the backyard, on the porch. I think my dad still has a couple of them hanging up there, actually. 5050, well,

Scott Benner 20:00
modern mental health doctors believe that you had, and this is me making up a term. It's not from a list, no fucking chance. Yeah.

Natalie 20:12
I know absolutely, absolutely. Isn't

Scott Benner 20:15
it interesting is that the things that happen in your adult life, which we're going to talk about, are completely predictable by these things,

Natalie 20:21
yeah? And it's, it's crazy that it's able to be

Scott Benner 20:25
predicted too. Yeah, no, no. I mean, isn't Isn't it odd to hear somebody read a list to you, and you go, Oh, yeah, that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Natalie 20:33
So what is this? Where do I call it? What was this thing called? Oh, if you want to look

Scott Benner 20:36
into it more, it's called the it's called aces. It's adverse childhood experiences, or sometimes people call it risk factors for childhood development, but the term ACES is it should get you there on a Google search so you start, okay, Jesus. Now, do you have a good sense of humor about this? Natalie?

Natalie 20:53
Oh, hell, yeah. Okay. Okay, good. Me. I mean, you should hear the sense of humor me and my my daughter have about everything, even the stuff that she's been through that I put her through,

Scott Benner 21:02
I've put her well, we'll get to that. So, yeah, 15 you go to a party and you're like, you know what? I could start slow with a half a beer, or, why don't we try acids? But did that, Christ, I know was that the first half hour you were there and is, I mean, can you look back now? Were you trying to escape, like, how you felt? Do you think you were just, like, getting involved in the family business? Like, what was going on there?

Natalie 21:27
I honestly, I feel it was kind of like I am hanging out with, like, the popular people at school. And I, I remember being just really excited that I was a part of that group.

Scott Benner 21:37
Maybe it was what they're doing that I'm in. Like, yes, exactly. Okay,

Natalie 21:42
exactly. All right,

Scott Benner 21:43
let me just weed. Probably yes, right?

Natalie 21:46
I've maybe been like, I a total of 10

Scott Benner 21:51
times, if that my whole life. Interesting cocaine,

Natalie 21:54
I've never liked it. You didn't like a couple times.

Scott Benner 21:58
Cocaine, a couple times. How about heroin? Never, never. I don't even like pain pills. Gotcha, but meth, yes, please.

Natalie 22:08
Oh yeah, okay, that's the winner. How old? First time, first time I was 17. Wow. My sister introduced me to

Scott Benner 22:17
it. Your sister was like, hey, you know what you would love math.

Natalie 22:23
So my sister had her, you know, my sister had a worst upbringing, or she remembers the real upbringing that I choose to forget. And she started very young, getting in trouble. She, she, you know, I was a golden child. If there was a golden child between us, I was a golden child. So she was the bad one. She started doing method like 15, and she's four years older than me, so when I was 17, she was already moved out of the house and stuff, okay? And I always kept my distance from her, because, I mean, I was in school and, you know, I was doing semi Okay, and somewhat of where I was going in life compared to her, right? But once my heart got broken by my heart my high school sweetheart, everything changed for me. Okay, everything. And I went to go see my sister, and that was it. So you go to your sister

Scott Benner 23:11
for some sisterly advice. And her advice was, let's do math. Yeah, wow, basically, geez, yeah.

Natalie 23:19
And I remember doing it for the very first time. And I'm like, like, smoking this bowl. And I'm like, I remember thinking, like, What the hell is this? Because, you know, like, when, when you drink, like you feel it like you your eyesight feels it like your whole body, like you could feel it. But like with meth, I was like, Okay, what is this? She's like, you haven't shut up for like, 30 minutes. This is the effects. This is this, is it? I'm like, oh, okay, cool. So I could be more outgoing. I was a little bit shy, Tim at person until you got to know me. Yeah, I was very shy. Actually, that's

Scott Benner 23:51
some positive PR for meth, by the way, be more outgoing. Have your teeth fall out. Do you have your teeth? I do. Congratulations. You know, I've

Natalie 24:01
also been blessed throughout my childhood of despite my criminal background and my history, I've always landed, not always, but most of the time. I've landed great jobs with big corporations that have good health care, really, so I've been able to keep my teeth like right now I work.

Scott Benner 24:19
My son's having trouble getting a job. Do you think I should tell him that on meth, you had no trouble getting hired? How do you think you'll well,

Natalie 24:28
okay, here's the thing. I didn't work when I was on very well, okay, did a little bit, but most of my adulthood have, I've been in recovery. I say it's been an on and off thing, um, mostly in recovery most of my adulthood. So

Scott Benner 24:43
how long did the seriously, how long did the math using go on for and at what point do you try to, like, get cleaned up? So from

Natalie 24:49
the time like 17, stayed on, it pretty consistent. I never got in trouble anything. It was just, if it was around, it was around. And you. My sister's boyfriend was the drug dealer, and she was with him for like, 15 years.

Unknown Speaker 25:04
He's got a good job.

Natalie 25:07
Yeah, it worked for a minute, right until it didn't. So it was always free to me. When I got pregnant is when, like, life started, like, flipping the switch, and during my I didn't really explain. Explain this for other people. It makes sense to other people. I was 19 when I got pregnant. I had sex with, you know, my daughter's wonderful dad. I say that very sarcastically. I mean, he's doing well now, but you know, at the time, not a good choice. I got pregnant after having sex with him one time, that same night that we had sex, which was Christmas morning, we got rated by the Feds for him because I picked a winner,

Scott Benner 25:46
jeez. So this wasn't the first time. Was this first time you had sex with him? Yeah?

Natalie 25:52
Christmas morning, the one and only time we had sex. And then the feds came and rated us for him. Merry

Scott Benner 25:57
Christmas. Here's a baby. Yeah? Get dressed. Yeah. And I because Uncle Sam, I ignored

Natalie 26:03
it too. I ignored that pregnancy for almost five months.

Scott Benner 26:06
You knew you were pregnant. You tried to pretend you weren't. Well, here's the thing.

Natalie 26:10
Apparently, you know, you have to read the directions when you take a pregnancy test, you know, so you're supposed to wait until you have a missed period. But when you're high all the time, you don't know what, how long it's been since you had a period. So I took two pregnancy tests, and it says I wasn't pregnant. So I was like, okay, like, I'm not pregnant. And then when I started, couldn't, couldn't put my pants on anymore, I finally was like, Okay, I need to go see a doctor, and I was pregnant. Really?

Scott Benner 26:36
Wow. Yeah. So I was, were you doing meth that time? Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, tell me yes,

Natalie 26:41
I was, I was totally getting high the whole time until I was about five months. Did

Scott Benner 26:46
that have any effects on the baby? Glad to ask her. I

Natalie 26:48
mean, she came out fine. She came out completely wonderful, beautiful, seven pounds other than that. I mean, does she

Scott Benner 26:56
know this? Like this, something she's aware of? Yes. Explain to me the day you said to your daughter, your daughter, right? Yeah, yeah, hey, honey, I have to tell you something. I used meth for the first five months of your pregnancy. So I don't

Natalie 27:11
really know how this topics started. I pretty I used to bring her, or even now she'll come with me every now and then to, you know, like a a meetings and NA meetings, you know, and topics would get brought up. I don't know if remember that conversation actually having with her, or if it was my even my sister drugs during her first pregnancy. And I'm, I don't remember how the conversation started with, we mean her. I was like, you know that I was high during the first part of my pregnancy with you. I remember saying that and us having a conversation. I don't remember how the topic got brought up in the first place.

Scott Benner 27:53
Okay, how many kids do you have? Just one one, it's the one. Just this lucky, this lucky baby that came out after Christmas, by the way, was that your Christmas present, like, did you get a bracelet too, or something? It's terrible. Jesus, my God, all right, hold on. It's

Natalie 28:14
not like we were in love. You know, I feel, in a way, I feel very fortunate because, like her dad, he's actually been on the news telling his story. He's kind of a cool dude to talk to, but he's been in and out of prison, you know, since he was 20. And he's 10 years older than me when I met him, you know, I was about 19, and he had just gotten out of doing 10 years in prison, and so I knew he was on the run, and then when he defense came and rated us, he did, like, another six years, got out for like, maybe a couple months, went back. He's been gone. He was gone consistently until she was about 14 or 15. So I told, in a way, very blessed that, like, he wasn't around, he didn't break my heart. He knew from day one. I never said I was going to be with moms. Like, dude, I'm done. Bye, yeah. Like, we've had an, like, a friendship relationship. And, you know, because of our daughter,

Scott Benner 29:10
listen, you weren't a virgin on this day, correct? Oh no, no. Oh no, God no. Did you hear the story about my grandmother?

Natalie 29:18
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 29:20
What I meant was, is that what I was trying to get to was a lot of your existence, just like, go somewhere, get high, have sex, yes, okay, and yeah, I got you. How are you involved in these many things that I know for myself, I'd go, I have to leave. Like, I don't want to be here. Like, if I went to a party when I was 15 and somebody was doing as they'd be like, Oh, I made a mistake, and then I would have went home. But what draws you in, over and over again? Oh, yeah, what doesn't stop you?

Natalie 29:51
I think maybe it's which is super controversial for a lot of people, of being able to stop I think my addiction kicked in. You know what I mean? There, there comes a. Point where you like to, I don't know if there's any medical terminology, but it's like, it flips a switch in your brain and it becomes the obsession. You know, it's not like, especially with math. It's not a physical obsession. It is a mental obsession. It's like that. What is it the dopamine or the serotonin that get kicked in? And it's just like, you have to have more. I can't even explain not,

Scott Benner 30:23
like, the way people like, talk about heroin, for example, like, it's not, like, a physical you think it's not a physical addiction for you? No,

Natalie 30:30
I mean, it would be physical, as in, you need more to stay awake and to, like, move and stuff, but you don't get physically ill. Offered, you know, like, the worst that's gonna happen when you come off of meth is you're gonna sleep, you might have a crazy outburst because you're so emotional, you're gonna cry and you're gonna eat a ton. Okay,

Scott Benner 30:48
well, chatgpt believes that it is physically addictive. It says someone uses meth it triggers the release of large amounts of dopamine in the brain, which creates intense feelings of pleasure and euphoria. Over time, the brain's chemistry can change, leading to tolerance, needing more of the drug to get the same effect. Yes, yeah, yes, that's your experience with it. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Wow. How old were you when you're diagnosed with type one?

Natalie 31:15
I was about 17, around 17, almost 18. I couldn't remember. I didn't start taking care of myself until I was pregnant, though, okay, yeah, I'm

Scott Benner 31:22
sorry. I couldn't remember at all. I was like, I was dizzy by the whole thing, are you taking care of your diabetes at all during that time? You have to be taking basal insulin at least, right?

Natalie 31:32
I would every now and then when I remembered, okay, it was like, and fun story is that I actually one of my best, like, using buddies was diabetic, and she was a type one diabetes since she was, like, nine years old, and so, like, when I'd see her take her in, I was like, No, I should probably check my blood sugar and see what mine's at as we're eating a pack of Skittles and drinking, you know, a Code Red Mountain too, because that's what we love to do. What

Scott Benner 31:56
a great idea. I should take my insulin. So, I mean, were you going to the doctor?

Natalie 32:00
No, no, no. So I got kicked off of my parents health insurance when I was out of school, because, you know, that's the way it used to be, yeah, and so, like, I was on state assistance. I made sure I stayed on government, like health care for so many years, like, intentionally made sure I didn't make enough money to make sure that my diabetes was taken care of. Yeah,

Scott Benner 32:22
so many years, so sad. I mean, it just is. Well, not just the whole thing is, you get diagnosed in your 17 there's no one there to God, there's no one there to be a parent, you know what I mean, and and to learn about this thing for you and try to help you navigate it. You're high now, so you're not even paying attention to it. They don't. I mean, you're a meth they got to know you're using meth, right?

Natalie 32:45
I was sure they knew. I mean, not once did anybody ever bring it up to me. But I'm sure

Scott Benner 32:51
that no one ever looked Natalie, you okay? You look high.

Natalie 32:56
Yeah, yeah. No, never, never. And you know, I was also never a person that got extra skinny or lost a bunch of weight, if anything, I was like, at the weight, I probably should have been, according to doctors, I didn't like pick my face. I didn't, you know, I have my teeth. I didn't fit the description of a tweaker at all. Oh, Jesus,

Scott Benner 33:16
this. It's so much to think about. You know what I mean? Like, there's so many people who are supposed to be supporting each other, but they're also lost in their own problem. That how could they possibly, absolutely,

Natalie 33:26
yeah, absolutely. And during that early time, my mom was actually in recovery, and she'd keep her distance, um, she'd let me come to her. Of course, I would go to her when, you know, like, she said, Yeah, Mom, I need money. Mom, I need this. Mom, I need that. And then when it was like, Mom, I'm pregnant. Like, if it wasn't for my mom, my daughter totally would have, and should have been taken away from me, for sure, for sure,

Scott Benner 33:49
because you would have done such a poor job, or because she was able, okay, yeah,

Natalie 33:55
to be completely transparent with it. If I wasn't so far along, I would have had an abortion, for sure. I never wanted to be a mom ever.

Scott Benner 34:05
It's because you found out at five months you couldn't do it, correct, yeah, all right, you would have had an abortion, but you didn't know for five months. You're so high you didn't know for five months, right? Right? Okay, exactly, all right. And then you find out you don't know what to do, so you go to your mom, yeah, what does she do for

Natalie 34:26
you? She hugged me, and she's like, You don't have to do this alone. I'll do it with you. I remember that, and we cried. She immediately went and found out the part, because at the time, she was running a halfway house, a recovery house for women. She put her whole life like on hold for me. She went and got us our own place that we stayed in for a few years together. You know, she helped me raise my daughter in the beginning, for

Scott Benner 34:50
sure, what was that like? Was she any good at that? Yeah,

Natalie 34:53
my mom. So another crazy part about my mom is she

Scott Benner 34:56
clean by then? Yes, yes. How does she. Like,

Natalie 35:00
when my mom, when she's like, when she's great, she's great, like, she is like, this person that you like, walk into a room and people are in awe of her because her aura was so good. But like, when she's bad, everyone is just like, Get Get away from me. Like, it's just crazy the night and day. Okay, now she also all my growing up, and from the time like I was born until the time I was 11, my mom was an in home daycare provider, and she had a sorry, hold

Unknown Speaker 35:29
on a second.

Natalie 35:30
I know, I know, I know he had a wait list, because people in the neighborhood wanted her to be like, watch their kids. She used to have a total of sometimes 16 kids at our home during the day. Is

Scott Benner 35:44
there any chance this was a front for a drug dealing thing?

Natalie 35:49
They dropped the kids off? Genius, yeah, maybe pick it up. Pick

Scott Benner 35:53
it up drugs when they drop off the kids.

Natalie 35:57
The new next series should start on that one.

Scott Benner 36:01
Jesus, hey. So you know this is screwed up, right? Oh, absolutely okay. All right, you completely were okay, so, all right, you have your daughter. When do you get locked up? What happens there?

Natalie 36:13
I have my daughter. She is about, I think it was around 2000 I don't remember the years, but my daughter was young. I eventually had gotten clean because I had gotten in trouble. I got my first felony. So I went to rehab and I stayed clean. I don't even want to say I was in recovery, so I just stayed abstinent for about five years. What was

Scott Benner 36:35
the felony? Well, I

Natalie 36:36
had that just means of transportation, and then I had that's with a credit card, forgery with a red instrument and identity theft.

Scott Benner 36:45
But forgery with a, what a written instrument,

Natalie 36:48
okay? Because I signed using one of the digital things,

Scott Benner 36:53
okay, oh, after you stole the credit card. Oh, yeah, yeah, we

Natalie 36:56
went to Macy's whose card just

Scott Benner 36:59
a person's No, okay, yeah, yeah, I got it. I have to ask you, what did you buy at Macy's?

Natalie 37:05
My God, a mixer, like, what? You know, those stand up mixers that I had no idea what to do with, but I knew the dope man would find it valuable. You know what? I mean,

Scott Benner 37:23
you bought the mixer to sell the mixer, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. It just sounds so ridiculous. You're like, you know, I just thought I'd get into making cookies. Scott, like I was all charged up on meth, and I had this credit card, and I was like, I got, we should try baking, yeah? But you

Natalie 37:39
were, I mean, that sounds normal, actually, yeah, like you're describing

Scott Benner 37:44
Thursday. It's so crazy. It's so it is crazy, and it's sad and happening to way more people than somebody would want to believe. Yeah, what leads you to get

Natalie 37:53
clean? I had was put on probation. Then my probation officer was like, Hey, this is your choice. You are not missing clean anymore or at all, or you're diluting, you know, like all these issues, you're either going to show up to this rehab or you're going to jail. Like, these are your choices. Okay? And so I went, and I showed up at that rehab, and at the time, I was actually have been with somebody who we use drugs with, and he had gotten clean on his own, and he was like, literally just waiting for my time to come, for me to get clean. And so he was already in recovery, doing well, and as soon as I got clean, we immediately got back together. We stayed together for a long time, and actually was engaged to him at one point,

Scott Benner 38:36
but you did go to jail. Is that correct at one point? I did that comes after this felony. Oh, after you got clean. Sorry, yes, yes.

Natalie 38:45
So I got clean. I never saw any jail time for that. Those charges, right? Because it was, like my first offense, you know, the relation, yeah, finished. That completed. After my fiance and I broke up, I went on the Benner of drinking alcohol. That's when I was like at my worst, and probably the most like alcoholic me I've ever been. My favorite thing to do was drink alcohol, drive a car, listen to music, and I used to do all those things together when I didn't have my daughter around me. So I got a DUI, and in Arizona at that time, not sure how they are now, but the laws were hard, super hard, and that's where 10 city came into place. It was my first DUI by first and only DUI offense. And I blue like a point one, five, but my blood came back at point 255, of course, they went with a higher charge. So I had a Super Extreme DUI. They let me do work with work release, which was crazy. So I did work release for 15 days, and then after work release, I was on house arrest for 45 days, and I had a breathalyzer in my house. So every time I'd come near like the house or entering back. Into the house, I have to go blow into this machine. And when I was on that house arrest is when I picked up drugs again, because I couldn't drink, couldn't drink. You know, the next option would be drugs during

Scott Benner 40:11
all this. There's no point your brain just, there's no point. I understand addiction and the idea there, but I'm just, there's no point where you just, like, think, like, this isn't going well, like my life is not going well. Or do you think it is?

Unknown Speaker 40:26
No,

Natalie 40:27
I absolutely know it's not going well,

Scott Benner 40:29
okay, but you can't stop long enough to like, did you have the opportunity for a change? Were you without opportunity as well?

Natalie 40:36
You know my aunt Missouri, like after so I left my fiance, I had gotten my own place. Of course, I ended up losing that place because the DUI and then and at that exact same time, like, literally, like two weeks after I got that DUI, I got laid off from my job. That was around 2008 I remember it was like the the recession type era, and I went to go live with my aunt, my daughter and I went to go live with my aunt, who also have both her and my uncle both have, like, long term, like, 20 plus years of sobriety. Okay? So I was like, perfect. This is where I need to go. But it didn't help. It didn't work. You know, I all I did was waste my time. I'm getting high during that time Jesus

Scott Benner 41:20
Christ. Oh, God heights, the horrifying okay, how do you end up in jail the next eventually, then

Natalie 41:26
eventually, because of the guy I was dating. I don't even, I'm not even sure stuff started getting too real. We took off in Texas because, of course, that was supposed to be a new change, and if I just get out of Arizona, I'll be fine. No,

Scott Benner 41:40
the problem is, it's Arizona, not me, yeah, of course, yeah, it's not me, right? If I can get out of here, I'll be okay, yes, okay, exactly. So

Natalie 41:49
my daughter's dad's family lives in Texas, and they said, hey, we'll put you on a train and you come move out here. So within seven days, I packed my daughter, my current boyfriend, and myself and we moved out to this little, tiny town with like, a population of like 5000 people in Texas. Awful experience. When I came back from Texas, I had a warrant out for my arrest for not paying my fines. Okay? I think it was like a bench board or something. That's what got me placed in jail.

Scott Benner 42:22
What went wrong that this is going to we're going to relocate, and everything is going to be great plan. Where did

Natalie 42:27
that go wrong? I immediately put us into another dysfunctional family. His whole family is also alcoholic, and his sister was so messed up on pills, like it was just like Jesus, you know, just me taking a step, and nothing changed. It just happened to be with a new family. Natalie,

Scott Benner 42:44
do you listen to the podcast? I do I sound like, square to you when I'm talking or do, like, how do I come on? Like, I'm being, being, like, really serious. Now, I'm not making this about me. I'm just trying to understand, like, I'm hearing your life, and I'm like, What in the hell is happening? Like, when you hear mine, what do you think? Normal, happy,

Natalie 43:04
stable.

Scott Benner 43:04
Is it like, I wish I had that like, because I get notes from people sometimes who are like, Arden, so lucky to have a dad who blah, blah, and a mom who and I, and I think all the time, like, how is that lucky? Isn't that the minimum I should expect from my parents? Oh, absolutely. But in most people's lives, it's lucky, you know what? I mean,

Natalie 43:25
yeah, unfortunately, yeah, no, I get what you're saying. You know I mean,

Scott Benner 43:29
no, listen to your list for a second. Your grandmother, your mom, your dad, your sister, the guy you met who rolled over on you and got you pregnant. Yeah, his dad, your sister, everybody you walk into the guy over here, the guy over here, like, you never once bump into somebody who's like, oh my god, Natalie, you're you're so lovely. You should be in the spelling bee with me. And you go, Oh my god, the spelling bee, that'd be wonderful. Nothing like that ever happens to you. Which indicates that you're so surrounded by it. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Jesus Christ,

Natalie 44:02
I'm a firm believer. Of, like, no, also, like, the laws of attraction, we attract people like us, you know, like, quote, unquote, like, normal people don't hang out with drug addicts. Well, yeah,

Scott Benner 44:13
I mean, there's, there's a fair statement for you, like, like, like, you

Natalie 44:18
know what I mean, like, I'm not going to be appealing to like, like, if me and you were to cross paths on the street, even having a conversation that's probably not ever going to go any further than that conversation, because we just have two different lifestyles. I

Scott Benner 44:30
could think you're lovely, have a great time talking to you, but you think there's some level where I'm going to I would go. It seems like maybe trouble. And no thank you. But would you see me and think, like, oh my god, stable. Like, how do I make this happen? Or do you think, no, I gotta go find a drug addict, because that's how I fit. See what I'm saying.

Natalie 44:47
The search was always to find somebody better and more stable than me. For

Scott Benner 44:51
sure, literally, just couldn't identify anybody and get and bring them into your life, into your sphere. Yeah.

Natalie 44:57
I mean, who would want, who would want to deal with this hot. Mess. You know what? I mean, nobody wants I mean, I'm sure you want to be captain save a hoe. They'd be like, that's a mess. Sorry.

Scott Benner 45:09
You know what's funny is, later I will get like, somebody will like, someone's gonna write a note that say I was like, insensitive to you, or I don't understand blah, blah, blah. They'll skip right over the part where you said Captain save a hoe talking about yourself, by the way, they'll just be like, no one will bring that up when they're yelling at me for doing this wrong. Later. I love what my job it's ridiculous. Holy Okay, Jesus Christ. Texas doesn't work. I have a hard time keeping up with this. Texas doesn't work. You know, you head back home, you get home to find out there's a warrant for you, and they and they arrest you, correct. How did they find you, though, like, how do they know you're back?

Natalie 45:45
I was at a bus stop.

Scott Benner 45:47
Oh, go ahead

Natalie 45:48
that that boyfriend that came to Texas with me. I was at a bus stop, and I think we were yelling at each other, and a cop happened to see it. Is everybody, okay? Yeah,

Scott Benner 45:59
let me see some ID. And then they he calls the guy, and the guy goes, Yo, you got one? Yeah, basically, you there with your baby or your daughter? No,

Natalie 46:09
the whole situation, I didn't bring my daughter, necessarily, through all my drug use, because it goes on and off, on and off, on and off from the time my daughter, when we got back to Texas, of course, I had to be like, Dad, I need help get me, you know, save me. And his stipulation was, either you live here or your daughter lives here, you're both not living here. It's a It's weird. My dad, my dad's weird. That's a whole nother thing, trust me.

Scott Benner 46:37
Hey, Natalie, you're all give yourself some credit. You're all weird. Don't worry about it. I'm weird too, but in a different way. But go ahead,

Natalie 46:49
my sister had taken my daughter, well, I went to my dad's okay. So which my daughter probably has a terrific story for you and her her growing up, because that's so cool

Scott Benner 47:01
when you put her with the lady who gave you meth for the first time for a while. Yes,

Natalie 47:05
yes. See my sister when we got in trouble for, you know that mixer that I bought at Macy's, my sister went to prison for that. Get out of here, he didn't get her life together. Yeah, I think she did two years and when she got out of prison, she's completely changed her life like she didn't. I mean, she's had her hiccups here and there, but she's her life.

Scott Benner 47:26
She completely changed her life, except for that six months where she muelled And like, oh God, exactly.

Natalie 47:33
Let's say she she went, can't even explain it, because her situation was bad. They saw because she got into an abusive relationship, I'm sorry. But other other than that, like, as far as the drugs and stuff like that, she cleaned her life up from that part that was just like the dysfunction that happens behind closed doors, or was, until she got out of that. But at the time, I did,

Scott Benner 47:54
all right, so they pick you up at the by the way, I've never even been to a bit this is going to sound very like, I don't actually, is this bougie? I don't know if I've ever been to a bus stop.

Natalie 48:03
You know, I felt the same way. I felt the same way. I never even so at that time, I'm what, 26 and when I got back from Texas, that was the first time I ever had to ride a bus too. I didn't even know what to do, okay? I was like, what? Like, I had asked. I was like, Where do I put this money? Like, you don't put money in here. You need to go across the street and buy a bus ticket. I'm like, oh, okay, even

Scott Benner 48:27
the arguing in public Natalie, like, it wouldn't occur to me to do that. And if I started it, like, if I was with somebody and we were getting loud, somebody would be like, Hey, let's, you know we're in public. Like, let's stop. Like, I know that for sure. It's, it's just really interesting. So okay, what kind of jail do you do? Normal? That's a normal.

Natalie 48:45
Oh yeah, that's how normal people would respond.

Scott Benner 48:49
We're in public. We probably shouldn't be screaming at each other. I live my life under very basic rules, like, I don't do anything that would draw the cops attention. That's my rule. Like, don't, get arrested. I don't want to get arrested. I don't like the I very simple ideas about how to live a happy life. That's at the top of my list, honestly, yeah, yeah, yeah. My brother one time. He's great now, but he was like, a really, like, troubled little kid, like, and my parents were divorced, and, like, I get why, right? And I used to tell him, like, because I was young, I was like, Look, just don't do anything that. If a cop knew about it, they'd be upset about like, that's how I that when I was when I was 13. That's how I talked to my little brother, because it was, like, the clearest thing I could think of to help him. But how long do you go to jail for, though?

Unknown Speaker 49:36
So

Natalie 49:37
I ended up, when I went in to jail, they gave me no time served, meaning my house arrest didn't count, and the 15 days of work release and account so I did three months you

Scott Benner 49:49
owed the whole three months. Okay? And are you taking care of your diabetes at that point better?

Natalie 49:55
You know, I would. I would at least give me myself the long acting. And then I gave myself short acting based on if I if I do what I was going to eat. Well, I think I maybe protect my blood sugar once every few days, right? So for people

Scott Benner 50:09
who's who take, you know, care of the of their health, you know, their diabetes health, can you describe them? How much of a week did you think about diabetes? Like, I'm trying to, I'm trying to show that like, you know what I mean, zero, not at all. No, okay. Like, not at all. The idea that you'd be hurting your health. Ever pop into your head? No, no. But

Natalie 50:37
you also have to think at this time, I was on state assistance. I saw only a primary care doctor, and I, of course, was given only the cheapest insulin. And they okay, they would do my a, 1c never wanted to be like, okay, so you're at 11. You should probably bring that down a little bit.

Scott Benner 50:56
Did you have any understanding of what any of that meant, or what the repercussions were?

Natalie 51:00
I mean, I knew a little bit just like based on like, what my mom has said, I never knew like based on like experience, because my mom didn't have any complications until, like, her last year of death, when she lost her legs. I mean, that her legs, yeah, middle of COVID.

Scott Benner 51:20
How old was she when she passed? Uh,

Natalie 51:21
she was 67

Scott Benner 51:23
okay. Are you okay? Like, now, I

Natalie 51:28
am. I'm good. Now, you know, like, I've been on Omnipod now since I saw my first very endocrinologist at 35 really, 35 Yeah, 35 years old.

Unknown Speaker 51:41
So you know,

Scott Benner 51:42
you're the first person I've ever spoken to who I asked how old they were when they were diagnosed. You're like, I'm not 100% sure. Yeah,

Natalie 51:50
I don't there was no, I've never been hospitalized for my diabetes, like, what so ever. I didn't even know pumps were, like, a thing that, like, helped. I thought you had to buy them out of pocket. I didn't even know until my doctor was like, Hey, let's get you on a pump. I'm like, I can do that. They're like, Yeah, your insurance will cover it. I was like, Oh, I have that kind of insurance. I didn't even know

Scott Benner 52:12
I got fancy lady insurance. I

Natalie 52:14
know, I know my work gives me free something, but I didn't know it was like, this much free.

Scott Benner 52:18
Okay, so Natalie, let's stop for a second. When's the last time you were high at what age 37 All right, three years ago, and in the last three years, you've been taking very good care of yourself.

Natalie 52:31
Yes, yes, I've lost 65 pounds. My a 1c is 6.2 which is the lowest it's ever been for me. Wow, that's great. Yeah, I also just got married a month ago. Congratulations. Like Life is good for me. Now,

Scott Benner 52:49
it took a while. Is it fair to say we have a lot of life left, but is it fair to say that once you had clarity away from drugs and drinking that you were it was easier to take care of yourself?

Natalie 52:59
Oh, yeah, for sure, I still don't, Hey, God, I hate to say this. I hate being defined. Saying, Oh, I'm diabetic. Like, I I really don't like, just like, I don't like saying I'm an addict, you know, I feel like it puts a label on me. And I feel kind of just like, hey, I have this thing that, like, I can share my experience with you, and hopefully it'll help somebody else out. I try not to let even my diabetes run my life, but it does. It absolutely does now, because I care now, and since, you know, watching my mom die, it kind of put like this thing, like, just clicked in my head and it was like, Okay, so let's say the magic number for me, let's just say, in my family history is living 30 or how old was she? She was 17 years or longer than that. I don't even know how to do math. 2727 years. Yeah, 27 years of her having diabetes. What if I only have 27 years to live with diabetes? Like, I'm already out of, like, almost 20 of those. Like, I only got a few years left, and that's what clicked it off for me. I was like, I cannot do to my daughter what my mother did to me. I can't do it. You

Scott Benner 54:07
never once thought I'm using meth. What if I don't have a lot of time left? People with the who use meth don't live very long. Like it was this, like, you get clarity from the drugs, clarity from drinking. Saw your mom pass away and still said to yourself, I might not have a lot of time left. I don't want my daughter to feel the way I feel right now.

Natalie 54:29
Wow, yeah, geez, people, I had gone to COVID and I was pissed off, and it didn't kill me, really. And that's when I got clean. Yeah, I woke up one day and I literally, like, I literally took the bag of drugs that we had just gotten that we couldn't do because we were so freaking sick. I jumped down this toilet and I was like, I was done. It's like, I'm done. People

Scott Benner 54:47
say COVID was bad, but it stopped you from doing

Natalie 54:53
Yeah, yeah. I was pissed. I tried it a couple times. Just couldn't

Scott Benner 54:56
you literally woke up and you thought, Jesus Christ, am I still alive? Yeah,

Natalie 55:00
yes,

Scott Benner 55:00
I guess I ought to pull this together then, yeah, damn. That's ridiculous. Like, I don't mean ridiculous. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, I

Natalie 55:09
like, that's what it took. Yeah, it's

Scott Benner 55:11
ridiculous. That that's what happened where you're like, okay, I'm good. Now I'll stop. Yeah, Jesus, huh? Walking down the street, I passed 50 people. How many of them are doing meth that I'm not aware of it? Oh,

Natalie 55:24
I don't know. I mean, in a way, probably a lot of people think about all the people that abuse Adderall. It's very similar. You can live a double life with it. You really could, like, the when I was doing meth in my 30s, like, most recently, before I got clean, like nobody would have known that's a double life. I kept my corporate job. I actually I had a side business doing Turo. I mean, I would flip cars. I'm buying and selling like I

Scott Benner 55:50
got two streams income over here, Scott. I got one that pays the bills and one pays for the menu. Yeah. Well, to pay for that, yeah,

Natalie 55:56
exactly. How

Scott Benner 55:58
old your daughter now? She's

Natalie 55:58
going to be 21 in a couple weeks. All

Scott Benner 56:01
right, has she used, is she an alcoholic, anything like that, or does she, like, run the complete opposite direction? To you? So far from what

Natalie 56:09
I know of, she ran the complete opposite direction. However, I see a lot of the same behaviors where that switch could flip on her. Like, it could totally click in at any time for her, but I've never had to deal with her. Like, what does that answer? Anything that like, I've never, she's never, like, been in trouble for it. Well, she's always kept a job, she was in school, like she was a decent person, a human being, so far,

Scott Benner 56:38
if I described so, look, this is, this is, this is the less fun part of my job. You're very much like you described your mom, like, great when our great problem, when I'm a problem. And if we, if I get your daughter over here and I read that aces list to her, how many of those things do you think she's going to say, Yeah, I grew up with that stuff. Absolutely,

Natalie 56:57
at 100% all of them, however, the little flip with that is is that while my sister had my daughter when nobody knew there was all that physical abuse going on in that household, that's what most of her childhood is going to be like. The only reason like my daughter C when I let my my sister take care of my daughter because I thought she was going to be in a better situation, my daughter was told that me and her dad didn't want her. I was told that she didn't want to come home and live with me. So when I found out that there was actual physical abuse, or just abuse in general, going on in that house, she didn't have a choice anymore, and I wiped her off and she came to live with me. She didn't have a choice. So

Scott Benner 57:38
your sister decided to tell you one thing while telling your daughter another thing, because she thought that your daughter was better off with her, and that was making you think that your daughter didn't want to be with you, but then you found out that there was abuse between your sister and her spouse, and then you use that to extract your daughter,

Natalie 57:59
correct? Yeah. So my my daughter, has probably been more witnessed to the kind of views that you see on, like, lifetime TV, right? You know, like the men abusing the wife and the children, than I ever did growing up. You know what I mean? I witnessed the views happening, which was my mom was, like, drunk and crazy and wild, you know. And it was totally different kind of abuse, like this ban was the kind of abuse that and he's a band that didn't drink or do drugs like he's just a mad, angry person type abuse. Did

Scott Benner 58:28
he abuse your daughter like hit her little bit, little bits have

Natalie 58:32
come out of some of the things he's done. As time goes on, she's gotten more open about what's gotten on in that household. I don't think he physically abused her. He almost had a couple times Okay, and my sister would jump in. If

Scott Benner 58:47
you were your daughter, what would you want from you? I was my daughter. What would you want from you? Like, yeah,

Natalie 58:55
stay the way I am now. Okay? I would hope so. Anyways,

Scott Benner 59:02
you think you can do that?

Natalie 59:03
I do think I can do that. You know, there's, of course, there's no 100% guarantees. But I also think, given the tools of, you know, like a a sponsorship therapy, you know, keeping a job, you know, doing things like with my fitness, you know, I decided to become a personal trainer on the side. You know, like, constantly improving myself is only going to keep me, like, doing better. Yeah.

Scott Benner 59:28
Do you have any other autoimmune issues? Do you have Hashimotos or anything like that? I do. I do. I thought you did? Your mom have it too? You want to

Natalie 59:37
get into medical history? Oh my gosh, my mom. Yeah, she has the diabetes. She just had an under active thyroid. My dad actually had thyroid cancer when he was 15, and had his thyroid review. And my sister had Hashimotos, and then she also got thyroid cancer, and then she also has a heart condition. And

Scott Benner 59:55
Ms, you guys manage the thyroid well. I mean. Know, I mean, you do the blood work every six months and stuff like that.

Natalie 1:00:05
I do. I do. I feel like, I mean, if you really want to get into, like, the healthcare part of it, I really think that there could be more done. I do watch what I eat, because I do notice that, like, what I eat, not just the diabetes. I get inflamed, and I learned recently about flare ups and Hashimotos. Like, I didn't even know that was a thing,

Scott Benner 1:00:23
like your TSH, maybe spikes goes up higher and, yeah, yeah.

Natalie 1:00:29
They're like, Oh, you're having a flare up. I'm like, what does that mean? What is this? I didn't even know. Do

Scott Benner 1:00:35
you keep your TSH, is there a number you keep it at? Or do they just tell you it's in range?

Natalie 1:00:40
They just tell me it's in range. I don't actually know what my my numbers are. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:00:44
we would like to see it under two. But the reason I bring it up is because the inflammation from the autoimmune in general, right? And then a thyroid, you know, anxiety, other I mean, you can look through everything that kind of comes with with Hashimotos when it's unregulated, some of the things you described could be related to that. I mean, people who have autoimmune issues are now finding, like, a lot of value with GLP medications, right? But GLP medications at the same time are also being talked about, about reducing people's other addictions. And you just kind of, like, start wondering about, like, what's all in the soup? You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I would start by making sure your thyroid, like, I'm trying to think of ways to give yourself, like, long term success so you can be the person you want to be, and your daughter gets the mom she, you know, deserves, and all that stuff. Like, like, I would talk to your doctor and say, Look, I want to know what my TSH is, and if it's under like two 2.1 or if it's over two 2.1 I'd like to maybe ramp up my medication a little bit to bring it under, to see if I have any alleviation of symptoms. I have more mental clarity, energy, like all these little things that impact people, you know, yeah, Jeez, what made you want to come on the podcast? Well, first

Natalie 1:02:00
it was, hey, that's cool. And then, like, I listened to other people's story, I was like, Yeah, I can relate, like, all those after dark ones I'm totally obsessed with, because those are my people. I get them also. I think a real part of me saying this person who I have become is also about sharing my story, okay, you know, and the way I felt I could relate to other people, hopefully somebody else can relate to me. And there's so many people on that Facebook group, I mean, it'll just reach out more friendships, yeah, and I think that's actually how it started at this because somebody had made a comment about having to go to jail and being diabetic. I was like, Hey, let me tell you what it was. Blah, was like. They made sure I stayed alive. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:02:45
I was gonna say, were you actually taking care of yourself? And, like, what was that three months like with diabetes? So when

Natalie 1:02:51
I was in tent city, it was because everybody got taken into, like, the doctor, the healthcare area twice a day, once in the morning, once at night. So that's when I would go so they would test my blood sugar, they gave me the long acting insulin once a day, and then they would give me the short acting based on what my blood sugar is. But before they would test your blood sugar once, then they made you drink a liter of water, wait 15 minutes, and then they test you again, and then they would no steer insulin based on that. Yeah, they can't be alive also, yeah, they kept us alive. Yeah, yeah. And it was, like the middle of summer in Arizona, and it was just warm. I mean, that was the least of

Scott Benner 1:03:33
you wait the condos you're in on air conditioned. What's going on? So

Natalie 1:03:38
10 city is literally army tent. Yeah, you sleep outside. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:03:42
Tell people about it, please. Yeah.

Natalie 1:03:44
So, I mean, they've taken it down now, which I guess is good, I don't know, but you literally, it's like a dirt, rock area, and there's, think there might have been, like eight tents in this chain link fence that I was in, and then under each tent. And you know that they're the big army tents that roll up on the sides and everything. Yeah, there's one big, giant fan that pushes air through one side to the other. And I think there was, honestly, there might have been 12 months. I could be wrong on a number per tent. Yeah, there, I want to say there's about 12. There might have been less than that for 10, and it was considered like, people who went to 10, I had to fight with a sergeant to get out to tent city, because you get less time. You'll get, like, two for ones, just for being out there. And you get to work,

Scott Benner 1:04:31
if you're willing to be incarcerated in the tent, it shortens your time because it's correct. It extra sucks, yes,

Natalie 1:04:38
and because you get put to work. You know, you go you go to food for inside the jail. You could be put on the chain gang. You get to work with the animals. But I wasn't allowed to do any of that stuff because of my diabetes. So I gotta rake rocks. Like, literally, I just raked rocks. I literally took a rake, walked up and down. Was this. Usually punishment, like, if you had your shirt on top, you had to break the rocks. But that's what I did to keep myself busy. I just break the rocks. That

Scott Benner 1:05:07
was your day. That was my day. What goes through your head? What do you think about with all that free time? How good I

Natalie 1:05:13
felt, these clean, really clarity. I could go I could go to sleep and sleep. Well, I could take a nap whenever I wanted it with, well, I mean, it was hot, but, I mean, you sleep. I had so much anxiety when I had to go home, because I knew it would just start up again. I knew it

Scott Benner 1:05:30
what would start up again by using okay, even though I knew it so you were, you were better off raking rocks in tent city than you were going to be when you got home. Yeah,

Natalie 1:05:41
it was kind of like Girl Scout camp, like, it's not, like, it sounds stupid, but, I mean, you got a lot of people in there that were, like, it was a lot of DUI. So, you know, you had your nurses, you had teachers, you had your moms. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't like hardcore criminals, if you know what. I mean, it was people who made mistakes and that have lives on the outside. Well, you could hear about other people's lives. You get, I don't know, you met some cool people. Of course there, there were some that were, I don't know, you could tell which ones were the tweakers, but I don't fit in with those, because I had this like, I didn't fit in with what they looked like or even how they acted. So it wasn't a tweaker, like, person, even though I did it so interesting, I know it is weird.

Scott Benner 1:06:25
Is the thought I have anxiety because I know I'm going to go home and do drugs again, or are you planning on doing them? Like, are you standing there going, Oh my God, I feel great, but I know, and I leave here, this is what I'm going to do. Like, did it feel like a decision you were making or a thing that was going to happen to you.

Natalie 1:06:41
I didn't get out. Of course, I didn't get out thinking, Oh, I can't wait to go, you trust I'm just going to go, you drugs, call everybody that I used to hang out with. I think it was just more of like that depression, of knowing I was like, stuck and I didn't know how to get out of it. You know, at that time, in my early 20s or mid 20s, I didn't know how to keep a job at all, like my anxiety was so off the charts. I didn't even know how to talk to people, like, if people used to come up and talk to me like I would cry, like I used to not even be able to get gas in my car without somebody being with because I was so scared all the time. And that definitely stems from my childhood, for sure, why? So I don't know. I was just always so scared, like, even in school, if a teacher would call on me, like it would take everything in me to not shake and cry, because I just didn't want to talk. It was crazy.

Scott Benner 1:07:33
So I think the idea is, if you grow up around alcoholism, there's this feeling that something's always about to, like, happen, and you kind of can't tell when it's going to happen.

Natalie 1:07:46
Yeah, you're like, in this constant fight or flight mode, yeah, yeah. I remember going to sleep as a child that was like that,

Scott Benner 1:07:54
just waiting for the other shoe to drop, like, when? When's this gonna happen? Like, and then how do so, if I stay quiet, maybe it won't happen. Or if I'm quiet, maybe they won't see me when it's happening.

Natalie 1:08:05
So I think it's more of like they won't see me. Okay, so

Scott Benner 1:08:09
once those people go back crazy, if I'm not on the radar, maybe I get through this unscath, yes, right, exactly. And that sticks with you as an

Natalie 1:08:18
adult, for sure. Even now I'm like, okay, like, I don't know, just like everybody around me and like, what I do, it'd be like, Okay, I'm just going to get a little bit further in my seat. Just stay here, do my time, go home, as long as nobody knows what I'm doing. We're good. Like, no news is good news.

Scott Benner 1:08:35
How does it work at work, though, when you're at like, a corporate job, like, you don't have those feelings there. I

Natalie 1:08:41
don't anymore. I've really, I've been promoted three times already, like, since this job, like, what I am doing is being seen and I'm being heard. And kind of crazy, how much I've come out of my skin. But I also think that, like, how much, like, I have grown like, even talking to you this would, I would have never even been willing to do this years ago, but with me, like I lived in the halfway house on an Well, actually, mostly on for about four years. I stayed there because it was comfortable. And in that return, I had to get a job, and I had to learn how to like function in life, and that's what made me all of a sudden grow up. I didn't become an adult until my late 20s. I still feel like I'm probably, maybe like, 3031, I'm probably at the same, like, you know, like, financially, I'm probably the same as somebody in the early 30s. Okay,

Scott Benner 1:09:28
I was just looking here while you were talking growing up with alcoholic parents. Have significant, lasting effects on child's development. Some ways are you can have emotional and physical effects, like increased anxiety or stress, depression, low self esteem. We didn't talk about your self esteem. Is it something that's been better over recently, or has it always been okay?

Natalie 1:09:48
I'm sure I've always had really low self esteem. I kind of feel especially younger, younger I definitely did. And since I've been an adult, like, since I've been to jail, like, when it comes to my physical appearance. When I went to jail, if you want to feel good about yourself, go take a shower with 50 other women. You realize that everybody has beautiful bodies, like in their own way. Or you're like, holy crap, my body looks great compared to her. And I know that's that's awful to say, but like,

Scott Benner 1:10:16
it's true, jail showers made you feel good about yourself.

Natalie 1:10:19
Absolutely. I was like, wow, I don't have any stretch marks. I've had a kid. Did you know what I mean? Like, oh, I got a little pooch. Like, you know what I mean? When you prepare yourself, I'm like, Okay, I'm not doing

Scott Benner 1:10:33
nobody cares either, right? Exactly,

Natalie 1:10:35
yeah. But when you think about self esteem, sometimes, like, when it comes to like, even, like, with me applying for jobs, and these corporate jobs that I've worked for, and I work for the big international company, it's like, do you tell them about your past? Because it's going to come up in a in a background check. Like, how honest Do you want to be? Or how honest do you need? So far, I've been completely honest, have

Scott Benner 1:10:59
you really? And how's that gone? Because meth is a thing I would think would just turn people right off.

Natalie 1:11:04
Most people have been very supportive, like, Wow. I would never guess that is crazy. I want to hear a story. You know, I'm not always willing to tell them a story unless they actually ask something specific. I do know my current boss right now comes from law enforcement, and so for her to immediately flip the switch of always, which I I knew about the conversation I had with her, she was very judgy of people with criminal backgrounds, right? For knowing me has completely changed,

Scott Benner 1:11:38
you know, so having these conversations has helped me a lot too. Yeah, that's why I'm always sort of just looking for, like, how did that happen? Or like, you didn't ever think this way or that? Like, why not? I wonder. Like, not like, why didn't you? But like, I wonder why you didn't. And, you know, like, yeah, it's just, it's a different way of thinking about it. By the way, behavioral and social effects difficulty with relationships. Children of Alcoholics struggle distrust, and they find it challenging to form healthy, stable relationships. You, of course, are at an increased risk of substance abuse. Yourself having behavioral issues, having academic struggles, which I think happened, didn't really have an opportunity to happen to you because you were doing well right up until you weren't at school. But you know, there's your point. Once it happens, you're in trouble, physical health neglect, developmental delays, chronic stress and poor living conditions can lead to delays in physical and emotional development. Long term, some children of alcoholics may develop a strong drive to over achieve or to be perfect and attempt to gain approval or avoid the chaos associated with their parents. Addiction. Many children of alcoholics caretaker role, feeling responsible for their parents well being, which can eventually lend lead to burnout and resentment. That's not going to end up it sounds like that might happen to your sister, actually? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. But increased resilience, despite the challenges, some children develop strong coping mechanisms and resilience that may they may become highly independent, resourceful and empathetic, though these traits often come at a cost of their own emotional well being. Sound like you? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. About that, well, don't make a baby if you're drinking a lot,

Natalie 1:13:12
because no more babies. For me, I'm

Scott Benner 1:13:14
talking to everybody else. You're 25 right now, and you're like, I just drink through the weekend. Now's not the time to start a family. Maybe because 40 years from now, whoever I am, 40 years from now, is going to be talking to your kid going tell me what your mom did. And, you know, very avoidable. Natalie, lately, I've been really overwhelmed with how avoidable so many of the stories I hear are, whether it's health and, you know, just having a doctor who understood a little better or took five more minutes, or you know that, or if it's, you know, a parent who, you know, doesn't make a baby when impregnated during an FBI raid. Because we can all just make these very avoidable decisions, like how much differently other people's lives turn out. It sucks that when you're 19, you don't have the ability to know your 21 year old daughter. Because if you were 19 on Christmas morning and you felt that love that you have for your kid right now, and this guy was like, hey, you know what we should do? You'd be like, hey, you know what? Get a condom buddy, because I don't want to disappoint this little girl that I love so much. I mean, I know it sounds ridiculous, but in my mind, like lately, I've just been I just, I keep hearing stories and thinking just if you just would have zigged when you zagged, or if somebody would have given you a chance, or, you know, a parent would have done a halfway decent job for you. Yeah, you know, you wouldn't hear all these stories anyway. You're bumming me. The out is what I'm saying. No, I'm really, I've been sincerely, a gum I'm really happy that you, that you chose to share the story as much as you think. Like, my story is I went to jail, you know what I mean, like, and I had diabetes. Like, I don't think that's the story at all. I think the story is that. You're, you know, two probably well meaning, lovely alcoholic, 20 year olds, you know, had you 40 years ago? Yeah, that's just kind of how I see it. But anyway, yeah, absolutely. How was this for you? Any good? It was cool. I liked it. Did you good? I'm glad. How do I do because I'm always afraid that I'm gonna, like, straddle the line on the wrong side when I'm trying to have these conversations.

Natalie 1:15:25
No, you gotta, you gotta ask the the tough, the tough questions. Thank

Scott Benner 1:15:29
you. I appreciate that. Like, the fact,

Natalie 1:15:31
the fact that you're like, uh, like, why? Like, you realize it just doesn't seem normal,

Scott Benner 1:15:38
you know, like, it's funny. Like,

Natalie 1:15:39
you do realize this, right? Yeah, you're

Scott Benner 1:15:42
hearing what you're saying, aren't you? Like, I God, I can't think of the one is recently it went up. You maybe, you know, because I think you listen to these. I stopped in the middle and I said, Hey, PSA, don't let a guy who lives in a van get you pregnant. Like, I was like, I was like, I don't know. I didn't realize that needed to be said, okay, but punch him in the face and roll Yeah? And I wonder if you realize, or people who find themselves in the situation you've been in over the years, if you knew that like 50 people like me heard your story, it's where it feels like nobody cares about each other, right? Like people who end up growing up in your situation say nobody cares, nobody understands, and people who aren't in your situation are like, You ought to, like, take some personal responsibility and get out of this, not understanding. I mean, it's why I read the ACES list. It's not personal under it's not, I mean, it's not you not taking control. Somebody dug a hole 20 feet deep and then put a trap door in the bottom of it, then dropped a baby in it. That baby was you, and said, Hey, see if you can climb out of this hole. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The people I'm gonna give you to help are a lady who pulls knives on people, drinks a lot, does drugs, a guy who's doing better than her but isn't doing that much better than her. Don't worry, though, one day, her sister will help her by giving her meth, like this baby's not getting out of this hole. Yeah, you know what I mean? And those are the people like You're like the worst episode of Dora, the Explorer, like your monkeys high. You know what I mean? It's a backpack that's drunk and a monkey on meth trying to help you get through the jungle. And you're like, and they're like, oh, no, no, we ain't getting you out of here. You nailed it. So you're in this you're a baby in a terrible situation. And by the way, the people who raised you very well could have been babies in terrible situations at one point. Yeah, someone's got to stand up and push the guy in the van off of them, like work. And I'm not saying it's up to women to make good like, you know, it's up to guys to make good decisions. Like, people just need to make better decisions in pivotal moments. And then all these very unavoidable things don't happen, absolutely. But it's not what happens Natalie and then in the end, it becomes, you know, it's every four years time to run for president, and so we all spend two and a half years talking about the things leading up to the Jesus. It feels like somebody's always running for president, but people have these conversations in their real lives, and somehow always boil it down to, well, they should take personal responsibility. Well, yeah, they should. But what are you going to do? Like the baby's in the bottom of the hole and you're yelling down to it, take personal responsibility. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. I don't know what to do. What if we just said nobody could have a baby for like, five years? Do you think that would give everybody time to reset or something? I don't know.

Natalie 1:18:38
You know, I really feel like the newer generation is having babies less and less.

Scott Benner 1:18:42
Yeah, but that's not good either. We're gonna run out of people,

Natalie 1:18:46
because the ones that are having babies are the ones that shouldn't be having babies,

Scott Benner 1:18:50
even if you say like, you ever noticed this? But this is gonna sound very generalized, and if you're a person with a lot of kids, I'm not talking just please try not to get upset. You ever noticed that people who are like all like, wow, they really do seem to have it together. And they really are doing well. Those people have one or two kids, and then, like, the guy who's got, like, a sign on their front yard that says something very strange that you drive by every day and go, like, I hope that guy doesn't shoot me. Like, he seems to have seven people, like children, and you're just like, how are we even gonna, like, rebalance this? Like, I just need a couple of common sense people to make some babies. I don't know. It's just very strange. I don't know how any of this gets fixed for you personally or for like, because now your daughter's 21 the real hope here is that your daughter waits to have a baby until she's sorted through all of her crap. Yes, that's pretty much all we that's what we should all be doing, not just people who are your kid, but my kids should do the same thing. Everybody. Just get through your before you bring someone else into your mess. You don't mean exactly super simple. Yes. Yes, but I don't know. It's hard to do. It just really, I don't know, you go to a party and my guy's a pretty girl. Next thing you know, you're like, we could probably have a baby, and you're too young to know what's wrong with you still. You know what I mean? Took you to 37 to figure out what you needed to fix. Yeah, I had problems I didn't know about my it took my wife being like, hey, that stuff's not okay. And I'm like, Oh my God, she's right, but I actually had to listen to her and then, like, work over and over again at trying to, like, level that stuff out. And then she had do the same and and we still had kids too early, so my kids are going to have problems that were avoidable if we would have waited longer. But I don't know. I don't know the answer to any of this. I'm just talking, but, yeah, sucks. You know what I mean? Like, I just feel, I feel better. It

Natalie 1:20:48
also, it kind of probably sucks. Also, being your position, hearing all these things about other people, and you're constantly, like, with the what the like, all the time. You know, I'm

Scott Benner 1:20:59
also tired today. I'd

Natalie 1:21:00
be able to do it. I just feel like, yeah, it's like, it is what it is, you know, what? What can I do? I just make it better, you know, try to help the next one. You know, let's I had a very

Scott Benner 1:21:11
long weekend, and it's funny, because I think if I told you what I did this weekend, you'd be like, if I got that much effort out of my parents spread out over 10 years, I would have been okay. Arden came home from college end of her sophomore year, and took her a while, and then she's like, I don't want to go back there. Here are my reasons, and some of her reasons were very, very poor direction from staff at the school. I am gonna, at some point tell the story of like, something that a teacher said to her that will absolutely anybody who's paid for five minutes worth of college, it will just lure you. Oh, and she's like, I I'm gonna change directions. You know, took her a while to, like, get up the courage to even tell us that. Then she told us, but so she's starting up at a new college next month or next week. Excuse me, but we had until next Monday to get her stuff out of her her place 700 miles from here. Oh, on Friday after Arden got sick last week. So our last week was we came home from vacation. Arden got very sick. My father in law passed away. We went to his funeral. Three days later, we had to get into a car and drive 700 miles to go pick up her stuff, but she was still sick. Oh, so she and I drove that time. She drove in one car because we needed both cars to bring it back. I drove in another one. We left our house at six o'clock on Friday, drove until like two in the morning, got a hotel room, slept, got up at eight o'clock, drove eight and a half more hours, got there, had dinner, went to sleep, got up at 5am packed her car up, and drove back home. Oh my Yeah. So I've driven 1400 miles in the last 48 hours or so, wow. And I'm I'm tired. And then on the way home last night, there was this horrible rainstorm on the East Coast. And so for about three hours last night, I was white knuckle driving, not able to see five feet in front of me. Oh, gosh. Now on top of that, knowing the knowledge of like, every decision I made my daughter was behind me in a car, like, counting on me not to run into something or hit something, yeah, and so it was horrible. I mean, I'm not kidding like I've been alive a long time. It's the worst, worst weather I've ever driven in my life. And we got home, decompressed, fell asleep, I woke up. When I woke up, my son was like, Don't forget, you have to take me. I'm like, Oh my God. Like, I so I'm like, getting dressed, I take him to this thing, I get home, and then I ate two eggs, and now I'm talking to you, dang. I feel like I'm doing a bad job today. I don't know if I am, but I don't feel as clear as I want to be to have this conversation with you. Well, do you at least get a rest after this? Arden has a doctor's appointment she has to be at in three hours that I'm taking her to. Oh, in between there, I have nothing to do,

Natalie 1:24:02
go take a nap. But

Scott Benner 1:24:04
am I wrong? Like, if we got into a time machine and went back and you said, Mom, Dad, I need you to drive with me 1400 miles, round trip in two days to help me with something. Do you think your parents would be like, Yeah, let's go at this stage. Absolutely no. How about back then, back then 20 years ago, maybe, maybe, like, if

Natalie 1:24:25
I wasn't, like, an attitude, like, I think so, okay, yeah, only because there's, there's been a couple times where my parents had driven, taken a few trips to go save my sister in a different state, type thing, you know, like, or try and change her situation around. When she wasn't doing well, they put a lot of effort in my sister. Yeah, I think they just kind of backed off with me being like, we can't save her. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:24:48
it's interesting, though, isn't it, to watch people who are so steeped in a problem that even though they want to and I would believe that, I would believe that your parents love you and care about you, and why. Want to do something good for you, when you don't know what that means, and you're put into that situation, then the help you give is often it's help on that level. It's not the kind of help. It's actually going to get you out of a thing, correct? Do you think that you actually needed the legal trouble to break free of all this? Absolutely? Yeah, everyone, 100%

Natalie 1:25:20
absolutely being even though I was at a very limited capacity on being a good mother, as soon as I became a mother, it changed everything to me, like she is the blessing I didn't know I needed in my life. You know, a lot of the expenses that her life. You know, unfortunately for her, she's had to deal with a lot of trauma and pain that she didn't deserve, but she saved my life. She gave me a reason to want to be better and to do better. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:25:50
it's got to be something. I mean, it's part of the human condition. It just has to be, because the amount of people who will tell me all the time like, you know, I didn't really take good care of my diabetes until I had a baby, or wanted to have a baby, or met this girl, and I knew like I wanted to be married and have a family, and so I had to do this thing. Like everyone, every adult who struggled through their teens, early 20s, with their diabetes, who no longer does, has some version of that story. I mean, not everyone, a lot of them, you know what? I mean, like some version of, uh, I couldn't do it for me, but I was able to do it for somebody else. Yeah, that's that story, and that is what happened to you with but with drugs instead. Yeah, diabetes, absolutely. And then your diabetes care came along after you were clear and you felt better. Yeah, got it all right, yep. Well, I appreciate you doing this with me and for laying that out like that, because I believe more people than we would want to think are in your situation.

Natalie 1:26:53
Yeah, unfortunate, yeah, but yeah. Well, thanks for having me, though. Are

Scott Benner 1:26:57
you kidding me? Thanks for having me. You don't send a note about Tent City and jail and meth. I think a guy

Natalie 1:27:05
already get more into the tent city thing. I know a lot of people are really excited to hear about that. I mean, kind of hard to talk about. Also, you know what? I mean, it's like what you see like on TV and what you hear about and read about, that's how it was. Yeah, you know,

Scott Benner 1:27:20
listen, I don't think anybody listening doesn't hear 10 city and can't fill in the blanks. You know what? I mean? Yeah, I mean, you're arrested for something. It's not nothing. I'm not saying it's nothing, but you know, it's not it's more socially acceptable. Well, you didn't commit a crime with a grand gun, you didn't hurt anybody, like, that kind of stuff, like, right? So you're gonna go to jail, and rightfully so. That's fine outside in Arizona in a

Natalie 1:27:43
tent with a fan. Yeah, that's the part that's crazy about it. Yeah, no,

Scott Benner 1:27:47
it's insane, right? And, and you said you lost weight. Did you lose weight there?

Natalie 1:27:51
What the 65 pounds? Yeah, no, I lost, I lost that when I decided to get so then the last three years, that

Scott Benner 1:27:58
was the sober that being sober helped you with that. Yeah? Okay, yeah. Geez, you're in a good relationship now I am good for you. Excellent. Look at you. Yeah, you know I thought I was gonna say goodbye, but I wanted to reiterate, as crazy as this has all been, and God bless you, it's been crazy this story. You're only 40, you know what I mean? Yeah, I know you're only four. I know you're laughing because you're like, I know I've lived like, 17 lives, but like, but you're only 40. Your daughter is only 21 there's a real world. I mean, it's been three years. You've been clean. There's a real world where five or 10 years from now, this all just seems like a distant memory.

Natalie 1:28:35
It already does seem like a distance memory, like, I have a hard time believing a lot of the stuff that I did and I went through, like, Was that really me? Like, but I can't forget it. I don't want to, I don't want to forget how horrible I felt, the depression that came with it, the sadness, the loss of hope. That's the part I

don't want to forget. Yeah, you felt, hope, you know, but like, it's like, I I stole cars. Like,

who does that? No, I mean people. I mean, that's kind of cool at the same time, like I stole cars, like I got a mixer. I mean, you

Scott Benner 1:29:15
can see it's so crazy that you can see it from both perspectives. You're like, who would steal a person's car? This is horrible. And how cool is it that I stole a car

Natalie 1:29:24
exactly. I mean, who's gonna do that?

Unknown Speaker 1:29:26
I mean,

Scott Benner 1:29:27
I take your point while you're saying I was, like, you have now you have a foot in both sides. But like, yeah, how interesting. It'll be really interesting to see how you talk about it 10 more years from now. You know what I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you'll keep changing, if you'll be able to stay, like one foot on both sides of understanding of this, or if, as time passes and you are, quote, unquote normal for longer living a normal life, if you won't look back more harshly on it as time goes by. Oh, yeah, okay. Probably. Okay, interesting. All right, Natalie, I'm just say thank you, because I feel like I could talk to you forever, and it's not fair to anybody, because, you know, it's getting long. Thank you very, very much for doing this. Would you hold on for one second for me? Yeah, thanks.

A huge thanks to a long time sponsor touched by type one. Please check them out on Facebook, Instagram and at touched by type one.org. If you're looking to support an organization that's supporting people with type one diabetes, check out touched by type one. You can use the same continuous glucose monitor that Arden uses. All you have to do is go to dexcom.com/juicebox, and get started today. That's right. The Dexcom g7 is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox podcast. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. You

#1360 Best of Juicebox: Jesse Was Here

Originally aired on December 13, 2016.

Sensitive topic - please consider not listening with children present.

Michelle has been a strong advocate in the “d” world since her son, Jesse, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2000 at the age of 3. After the sudden loss of her son at the age of 13, she continues to advocate and educate.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends, to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.

This episode originally aired on December 13, 2016 it was episode 90 of the Juicebox podcast called Jesse was here. It's marked as a sensitive topic, and at the time, I wrote, please consider not listening to this with a child present. Michelle has been a strong advocate in the diabetes world since her son, Jesse was diagnosed with type one diabetes in 2000 at the age of three, but after the sudden loss of her son at age 13, she continues to advocate and educate. I'm running this today as part of Diabetes Awareness Month to memorialize Michelle, her husband, Jeff, Josh and Tammy Stahl and Barry Sievers. These five people all part of breakthrough T 1d ride team recently passed away in a tragic car accident. Please keep Jeff, Michelle, Josh, Tammy and Barry in your thoughts and prayers, and think of their families and loved ones. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, please Always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan.

This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. G vo hypo pen. Find out more at gvoke, glucagon com, forward slash Juicebox. This is a content warning. This episode of the podcast deals with life and death. As I know that many of you listen with your children. I just wanted to let you know that you might want to skip this episode with your kids.

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 1:54
I'm Michelle alsweger. I've been involved in the world of diabetes since my son, Jesse, was diagnosed at the age of three on march 3 of 2000 I became a director of jdrs in those early years. I helped begin some ski snowboard camps called riding on insulin, which my son participated in, and I kind of stepped away from diabetes for a few years, my son was kind of sick of talking about diabetes, so I took a job at a woman's magazine and just kind of volunteered my time in the world of diabetes. And then on February 3, 2010 my 13 year old son, Jesse, passed away from his type one diabetes, and I became an advocate, more so for people who also have lost their children to type one diabetes throughout actually, all over the world, I mentor about 100 families through a private Facebook group, getting them connected to each other so that they have the support that they need. That's

Scott Benner 2:54
really amazing. Oh, okay, so how old was Jesse when he was diagnosed?

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 3:00
So Jesse was three years old when he was diagnosed.

Scott Benner 3:03
What was the presentation? Was it average? Normally? Yeah, it

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 3:08
was every typical, you know, everything he was, the little, skinny three year old boy, all of a sudden, started wetting the bed again. And I was kind of flustered about it, because we had a water container in our refrigerator, and I caught him getting up in the middle of the night, getting himself water. I thought he was just fascinated with the fact that there was a spigot that he could mess around with, but it turns out he was just really super thirsty. And it was a Friday afternoon, and I was ignoring the warning signs. I didn't want it to be diabetes. I grew up with five aunts and uncles with type one diabetes, my grandma raised five and back in the day when insulin, you know, came in a glass syringe, and it was even before urine test strips. I was around people who use test tubes to check their urine for all of that. So we, you know, the typical signs took them to the emergency room. It was one finger poke. Simply, I was very fortunate that there was no misdiagnosis, and they just simply said he has diabetes. And so

Scott Benner 4:06
you, you had a fair feeling from your your past, your history and your family, that that's what was going on. Yeah,

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 4:13
absolutely, I definitely wanted to be in denial and but you know what, there was also that point where, you know, I'm driving to the hospital and I'm, you know, saying out loud to whomever the universe, you know, please don't let that be diabetes. And then at the time, I was thinking, Well, wait a minute, I hope it is diabetes. Don't, don't let it be something like leukemia that could possibly take his life, right? Never occurred to me that it could possibly take his life.

Scott Benner 4:38
Okay? So, three years old. Gosh, that's a while ago now, injections like, like, just, there's no glucose monitors or stuff like that right at that moment.

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 4:50
No, there were meters when in 2000 so he had meters. He actually, at the age of five, went on an insulin pump. Okay, he was one of the first kids in our area to go on at. Because I fought with the endocrinologist to make that happen. And actually, you know, if you flash forward to 2010 he actually did have a continuous glucose monitor. He actually didn't wear it very often. It was at a time where they were still a little bit sickle, and he decided he didn't want to feel like the front of an airplane, you know, dashboard. He felt like were too many devices hanging off of him at the time.

Scott Benner 5:27
So was he? Was he wearing it at the time of his

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 5:30
passing? No, he was wearing his pump. He was wearing a pump. Okay, so,

Scott Benner 5:33
okay. So I think we should just dive right in, because, like I told you before we started recording, it's, I always think to talk to you, because it always becomes my concern that, you know, inevitably, someone passes away. And I don't want to say how frequently it happens, because I don't know it. It feels like at least once a year you hear about someone that that's lost their life, who's had type one diabetes and living with it. And then it's always my fear that when people see that they that they become more cautious about their own care, but maybe in the wrong way, maybe in the way where they're like, Oh, I'd be happier to accept the high blood sugar because, yeah, maybe they kind of incorrectly think that the way somebody's passed is just because their blood sugar has gotten very low. So

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 6:15
yeah, your podcast is timely, because this has been a topic that there's many of us. They've been talking about this topic, the high blood sugars, right? Yeah, Derek rap, who is the jdrs CEO. He and I have been conversing about that exact topic, and I've been talking with beyond type one about that topic, because I think it's, it's phenomenal, right now, I'll back up just a little bit. When Jesse, when Jesse died back in 2010 nobody was really talking about death due to type one diabetes, right? We're all kind of scared. We don't want to talk about it. And let's face it, endocrinologist didn't really tell us that diabetes was something you could die from, right? So, you know, it was something we said, no, just take good care of yourself. You live a long, happy life, right? So when he died, because I had international attention from a documentary I had done. People knew me, and so they thought, oh my gosh, if this can happen to this mom, it can happen to any of us. And so it puts everyone in panic. And so I think every time you hear of a death, and you know, you said, once a year, I hear from someone at least once a week that has lost a child to type one, at least once a week, some become more public than others, because some people just, you know, when they when they passed away, they their way of dealing with it is to kind of go inside. They're they're not going to be proactive, and they just needed, they just, that's how they're going to grieve. So what's happened is, everyone talks about dead in bed, right? Which is, I'm so afraid my child is going to have a low and he's not going to wake up in the morning, which is rightfully so. I get it, and, you know, it's a fear to have. That's why CGM are so amazing and alert dogs. But what people don't think about, and they're not talking about, is the high blood sugars. The one thing I've learned through all of this is, I call it the dangerous cocktail. The dangerous cocktail. Everyone's got their eye on those low blood sugars in the middle of the night. They're waking up in the night. But I don't see parents panicking as much when their kids are at a 500 or their meters are just reading h i They're not testing for ketones. I know a lot of families don't even own keto strips. I know a lot of adults with type one that I work with in our endurance community don't carry keto strips, which they don't realize. The dangerous cocktail is this. This is what I've learned from the depth is if you have a high A, 1c and then you tack on and you add that you have a high blood sugar right now, and you have large ketones, that is a recipe for disaster. So like, for instance, if you have a teenager who's currently an ANC of 12% their bodies, and I'm no medical expert, right? I'm just, this is my opinion. And what I've seen, of course, is there if their blood sugars are high, and they have a high ANC, and those large ketones, and they are in DK. And as moms and dads, we're not as afraid of those high blood sugars. And we also have a fear of taking our kids to the ER, because we've learned over the years that we feel like we know more than the residents that are there, right? I mean, I bet you there's 100 people that will listen to this podcast and have a memory of taking their kid to an ER, and the resident starts to load up insulin drip instead of a glucose drip, right? And you're like, Whoa, what are you doing? Right? So we have this, we have this doctor mom and Doctor dad syndrome, where we we think we can take better care of them at home than at the hospital, and then by the time they get to the hospital, it's too late.

Scott Benner 9:40
Yeah? And that makes no it makes a ton of sense. And I think it feeds right into, you know, everything that you've said so far, plus everything that I see, usually, hold on. I have to tell arm to drink a half of a juice, just texting her, we're good, okay. And so, you know, so I think that what you see here is that, first of all. Yeah, like you said, when you start off, I remember getting, you know, somebody handed me glucagon, and I was like, What's this? They're like, Oh, you know, it's in case they get really low extension, you'll never use it. Don't worry about it. And so then that's the overall feeling, like, Oh, she has type one diabetes. It's horrible. It's going to be with her forever. But even the emergency thing, I don't even have to understand that well, because it's never going to happen. And then you know, as you're acclimating yourself to trying to figure out how the insulin works. The message from medical a lot is better high than low. And then you're and then that the you're sort of the human part of you takes over, right? Well, they said 150 to 200 was okay, but it's only 210 so that's fine, right? And then your body, you start to accept it. Well, 250 I mean, that sucks, but it's not terrible. I can get it down. And before you know it, 180 200 is your norm. You live there. And then when you see a 320 suddenly it doesn't seem that horrible anymore, even though your blood sugar is now at 323 times what it should be, and, and, and there's not that panic. You do see it all the time, like people say, Well, I want to get them, I want to get their blood sugar high overnight so I can sleep. I don't even understand that I'm up as much when my daughter's blood sugar is high as when it's low, maybe more honestly, when it's high, because more difficult to deal with. It takes longer to adjust and fix.

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 11:15
And a lot of a lot of parents aren't actually informed either, though, that you know, in their kids, there's a child can have 150 blood sugar, which, you know, fine. It's an it's in a range. But if they're, if they're sporting any kind of ketones, and they're not getting, like, you can be 150 and say, Oh, if I just don't dose insulin, they'll be fine. Their body constantly needs that insulin. You constantly need to be feeding that system. So you can be in danger at 150 if you have large ketone, yes, if you're not, yeah,

Scott Benner 11:43
it's my daughter's sick right now. She's why she's home from school. She has a head cold. She doesn't have a fever, she doesn't have the flu, just has a head cold. And for the last two days, her blood sugar has been difficult. It sticks at 200 I have to give her enough insulin to knock a horse over to get it to move down overnight. At three o'clock. She's growing on top of it, so overnight, I get three o'clock in the morning the night before, it just it tried so hard to go up, and I, I felt like I was, I was putting insulin with a funnel instead of with a cannula, you know. And and then last night, I just didn't wake up, I think, beeped and beeped and beeped. And at 6am I opened my eyes, the first thing I heard was it beeping, and I thought, and I looked at the graph, and sure enough, at three o'clock, she went from like 120 like straight up. And I went in. I tested her. She was 310 she had been 310 for three hours. You know, for the most part, I Bolus so much insulin. I mean, just two and three times what moving her 200 points should take. And I still had to Bolus again and again. And by the time she was down to 80, it took me, I'm gonna say, the better part of four hours, and I gave her, you know, so much more insulin than I would have in a normal situation, because very likely, and I didn't test her, but very likely, she had ketones, plus it's more difficult to affect the high blood sugar. You know, once your blood sugar is high, it takes more insulin, normally, those sorts of things. And then I think that's how people get caught in the loop. They see a 250 and they go, Oh well, you know, it should be this much insulin, and then they end up using half as much as it takes. And then two hours later they go, Oh my God, it's still 220 and they try it again and again. Before you know it, it's time to eat, and then it just, you get caught in this horrible cycle. It is very hard on your body, and so you know, and it's, it's not going to kill you this second, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have a hard effect on you. And I think that's hard for people to hear that they're that they're they or a child, has a disease that has two sides of a spectrum, and both sides of it are equally dangerous, just the timing of the most dangerous, like, do you want to, do you want to have something horrible happen to you right now? Do you want to have something horrible happen to you 10 years from now? Do you want to have something horrible happen to you three months from now? And what, I think what happens is that becomes so overwhelming for some people that they just panic and pick a side and they give up in some way. And I'm always trying to tell people that it's not as crazy as it sounds if you're struggling with it. It is much simpler to keep a blood sugar more around 100 than it is to keep it higher and and then it just takes practice and a little bit of knowledge. And a lot of times that is knowledge you don't get at the doctor, which is why community ends up being so important sometimes. But you know, that's why I asked you on I just, I just wanted people to hear from somebody who had lived through it and was still talking about it, that, you know that. So, I mean, I guess Can we go backwards a little bit, and I don't know how much of this you talk about, but do you know the the steps that happened, that that led to Jesse's demise? So

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 14:48
it's interesting. It's interesting. So I'll give you my perspective on this. So ever since that happened, and every time there's a death in the D O, C deputies online community, you know. There's different sides that happen. There's times where I feel it's really awesome, like I'm so happy people talk about this now, because even if we save one life, it's like one parent decides to get up an extra time in the night, or one parent knows the warning signs, like, as long as we're talking about I think it's really good. Then there's this other side, where I like to protect the parent from seeing things. Let me give you an example. I'll go back to your actual question. So there was a recent death. The young lady's name was Alex, and it blew up all over Facebook, and it's so well intentioned, and the people who are posting it? Mean, well, right? Yes, but what I saw and made me sad, and a lot of the parents in the community that nobody wants to belong to, right? This lost community, we respect the parents privacy. So what happens is, someone posts that photo like I would rather see it. Say there was another loss in the community, you know, prayers, sadness, all of that, that's fine, but what happens is the threads blow up, and what you see is, well, what happened? What was the parent doing? And then you see hateful things, like, clearly the mom didn't know what she was doing. Or, how did that girl not know for 48 hours she was in D, K, a, such that that could have been prevented, that what I see in that is there is a mom out there who's suffering. She's going to suffer for the rest of her life. She lost the child. And these people are gossiping. It just comes off as gossip, because those those parents, as much as they want to know what happens, got you already know the answer. We know people die from extreme highs and extreme lows, and all you have to do is keep doing what you're doing, getting up in the night, checking what happened to Jesse is what I will tell you everybody is, I don't go through the steps of what happened that day, because when I'm asked to do that, you're actually asking me to relive my worst nightmare, Right? So there's, there's a, I call it the slideshow in my head. So I have to shut off the slideshow because I can't relive that memory. So what I do is I tell you simply this, you're already doing what you should be doing. It's highs and lows. The coroner actually told us he's basal and he labeled it as D, K, a, and I can second guess it. I could read the coroner's report. Nothing is going to bring him back, and nothing is going to save you know, Aiden, or anybody, right? And it you just have to keep, just keep trudging. And another thing I tell people a lot is you can spend so much time focused on the diabetes and asking me questions about exactly what happens, and you miss that your child, you know, gets hit by a bus walking across the street, or riding his bike, or riding an ATV, or, you know, he gets cancer. So, so that's kind of how I always handle that question, is, there's no there's no pinpoint, there's nothing that's going to save your child by learning exactly what happened. I mean, in all the families that I've encountered, the 100 families that have found me and found our private Facebook page where they can grieve and dream or share good details or Happy Days, is the college age kids. There is something there to be said that when you're sending your kids off to college, the biggest thing I see is death due to DKA. They go out drinking with their buddies, or they simply just don't tell their roommates they even have diabetes. Or how to give them a glucagon, or how to if I'm acting weird, you know, give me, give me a juice box. This is what these are the steps you need to take. What happens is maybe they went out drinking and they're acting a little weird, and people just put them to bed thinking that they're just drunk, right? And then they don't wake up. There is a very big preventive measure you can take in that situation. Well,

Scott Benner 18:56
I would say that, and I asked you that question, hoping you would answer it the way you did, and more, just to kind of spur on this part of the conversation, I guess. So when you see people in the community or online or wherever it ends up being, and they start wanting to mine out the information. How did this happen? What are the steps? I always think they just want to know what happened, because they are just hoping that the story is opposite of what they do. You know what I mean? Like, like, they just want to hear that someone did something wrong, or someone did something, you know, in their eyes, it's not correct or different than they do, so that they can sit back comfortably and say, oh, okay, good. I'm not doing it the way they did it, so my kids gonna be okay and and it's just, it's just to me. It's let me know how to put it really. It's just a wild like flailing into the world, like, you know, just, please let this not be my story. And I need to hear, I need to hear your story so I hear so I find out it's not mine. And, and in the end, that they don't see how horrible it comes off. Is, is fascinating. And I'm not saying you don't have those thoughts. I mean, you you spoke about the the little girl, or the the girl who who passed recently. And I try very hard not to pay attention to just any of that. I don't think it's any of my business. I don't pay attention. And I heard one person say that, you know, the kid had it was in decay for, you know, days. And it did pop into my head like, God, didn't they test? Didn't they know, but at the same time that my next thought is is very simply this, and I mean this completely, completely honestly, it's a really terrible disease to live with. The factors that affect you come from so many different directions and so fast, and everyone's understanding of it is different to blame anyone for anything that happens with type one diabetes and the use of man made insulin and not having a pancreas that works is just flatly not. It's not human You can't blame somebody for that. It's no different than blaming somebody for, you know, being in a car accident, or, you know, falling off of a bridge, or, I don't know what the hell like anything. You don't even there's some things in the world that just happened to you. You can't be blamed for them. And it's it's wrong to try. I think so

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 21:09
well. And the reality is this, there is not a parent out there who's lost a child isn't already dealing with blame on their own, right. So there's, there's so much Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda, no matter how it happened, where it happened, when it happened, if I spent all my time blaming myself or my ex husband, I wouldn't live day to day. And like, people don't understand sometimes that for the first few years and sometimes, I mean, I have people that I've been part of this group for seven years, we've kind of gone through this together. They never kind of escaped the constant pain and suffering of it, they just That's That's where their grief took them. It's interesting because we're talking about this because someone shared an article with me today about grief and loss of a child, and like, seven things I've learned from from loss of my child. So well written and it's and like, step number seven just really resonated with me is that because of the deepest pain that we have felt, we really experienced joy more than the average person. And I don't know if you can completely understand that, but like, because we know the bottom of bottom, like when we see joy, it's such a strong emotion. And the same with grief, like any kind of loss we feel now, like, say, someone goes through a breakup, I call it. How do I explain it? It's like, it's like, you already have a sunburn, and then the sun shining and burning it worse, right? So everything you feel painful is twice as painful, and everything like joy, really stands out. And I say that because, like some people can see me on the diabetes online community, I write a lot for beyond type one. I, you know, I've written for D life, and I share my joy a lot. And I, you know, I am living a great life. I tomorrow, I leave for Rutger Ridge, Colorado, and I get to ski with, you know, 25 type one key coaches and help train them and and then run a camp on Saturday up there for kids with type one diabetes. I'm living a really good life, and I've decided when I say things like, people ask me, how are you? And I can say I've never been happier. It used to really pain me to say that, because I would always think, what is that person thinking in the back of their mind? By God, she lost her child. How can she say she's happy well, because I have to move forward. I have to continue living. I can't live in doom and gloom every minute. But don't for one second think that a parent who's lost a child isn't feeling this underlying, constant hole in their life. They're just they're just learning to live with just like, much like you learn to live with, you know your child's diagnosed diagnosis, right? Well,

Scott Benner 23:43
I was gonna say yeah. I was totally Yeah. I was just totally gonna say I it's, I mean, I'm prefacing it needlessly, because I don't feel like you need me to, but it obviously, it obviously doesn't compare. But at the same time, I know what you mean about the joy thing. Like, I always tell people like, now that my daughter lives with this chronic illness that does envelop a lot of our time. It does loom over top of your head. Is she okay now? Will she be okay later? How is this gonna affect all these things that when something good happens, you really do feel it very purely, and at the same time, when something that you used to think of as being bad happens, you can laugh it off almost sometimes, like, sometimes I'm just like, That's not important. Is that person upset about that? You know? Like, they totally should get up with me tonight at 230 and watch Arden try to eat a banana in her sleep. Like, like, I think that would definitely change their mind about what bad means. But at the same time, I heard what you were saying. I guess that when you see something bad that it brings all of your emotions to the top more, because I can't imagine how strong you are to be able to get to the point where you can say, This is the happiest I've ever been. Because being someone who has not nearly gone through what you've gone through, I'm having a hard time imagining being able to get past the idea that I'm allowed to be happy. Me after and and that I should be or that I'm not hurting something, and that you figured that out, that path that's magnificent. I'm so glad you're sharing it with other people, because it's not something anyone can imagine, obviously, unless, unless it's happening,

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 25:14
the only way you can, the only way you get there is with support.

Scott Benner 25:18
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Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 26:30
And you know, I was just very fortunate that the people I chose to surround myself with, you know, I have to tell you, like, there's this very weird thing that happens at boss, you and I have written about it, but when you when I lost my son, I also, I was very involved in the diabetes world, you know, I'd done a documentary I had, you know, given to, you know, done every JDRF ride every year, all over the country and and all sudden, like, who's going to want to Be around the person who lost their kid to diabetes. If your kid, you know, if you as the parent who have a healthy type one living at home, you're going to want to spend any time with the mom who lost a child. I really panicked I was going to lose this entire community, and I was very blessed and fortunate that my my people rallied around me and, you know, and it's, you know, I talked about, you know, I'm very blunt. I talk about, you know, the loss of Jesse and and moving forward and what I continue to do for the community. But I just, I guess, I just feel very lucky that I was, you know, allowed to stay here. Of course, I use my time wisely in that, you know, when I'm in a riding on insulin case number camp, and I'm standing talking to a 10 year old kid, you know, and he says, How old was your son when he was diagnosed? I just say three. And yeah, he asked questions I would never talk to, you know, those kids, sure, you know, and tell them, I lost my son because it's not inappropriate. He

Scott Benner 27:59
was about your age when he passed. Yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's no value in that. No value. Yeah, exactly, and, but it is really cool that that people did that because I, I tried to imagine, do people struggle with how to speak to you when they know? I imagine they would, right,

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 28:16
sure. Um, I mean, the worst is when someone doesn't know. I mean, now it's been seven years, so it hasn't been as bad, because most of the people I know know, but you know, in the in the early first couple years, it's just so horrible is, you know, you run into an old neighbor and they're like, gosh, how's Jesse? And you're like, Well, you know, and you what's hard for those families, and myself included, is if forces you, they're grieving for the first time, and you're forced to re grieve something. You've you've gotten your you're at Step 29 and they're at step one. And you know, so you see their pain and you see their grief, right? So, you know, I, I don't even reach out, like if, if a family is lost, I don't reach out to them. I kind of wait for them to find me, let them come to me when they're ready. And some are never ready. Some just decide, you know, it's just not their thing to grieve with. Others, they just, they just don't find a need for it. But it's a solid group that helps each other, and I'm really proud that a lot have gotten involved. And, I mean, I don't know if you know, but like, beyond type one is really involved in the whole DKA movement to get information to every pediatrician in the US. Yeah, warning signs. And while that's not going to save a Jesse, it is going to save kids, and it's going to save lives. And I'm like, I'm just so proud of the people beyond type one that they took a sensitive topic that I know that they've been contacted by others in the online community who are saying, you're scaring people with this topic. And, you know, I think that their opinion, and I can't. Really speak for them, but just from conversations I've had with them, is they're like me. They don't care if it saves one kid. It's worth talking about.

Scott Benner 30:08
Yeah, I interviewed Mary recently, and we were talking about all these different ideas and and I can't see, I can't agree with that more, and at the same time, like you're scaring people, the idea that you're scaring people by bringing that up, I that that starts to scramble my head, because here's what I'm scared by. I'm scared by all the people I see online who say things like, hey, my kids blood sugar has been 300 for three hours. Should I correct again or I don't, you know? Do you think it needs more insulin? Like, and I'm not scared because they don't know. I'm scared because someone hasn't explained it to them, because their doctor didn't tell them, because they got some sort of info. Some sort of information that led them to that thought and and you can, you can shine a light on things like DKA, you know, awareness, and try to pretend that that's scary, but that's not the scary thing that's going on in your community. What's going on in your community, I think, simply put, is that most people don't understand fundamentally how insulin works and how to use it. I really think that's the most scary thing, because at some point then, and I know most scary is not English, I'm pretty sure, but, but most, very scariest is what I'm saying is, is that, is that none of us really get taught how to use insulin and how it works. And then, you know, I,

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 31:23
I have a, I have a really interesting story like, just to share quickly on that is so one of our elite coaches, I'll use her name, because she won't care, Lauren, Lauren and I have gotten very close over the last few years, because she also did the Ironman Wisconsin with our group this last year and doing it again. So we've gotten to be friends. And she's She stayed at my home, and she was over in Austria. She lives over there quite a bit of the year because she trains with the ski team over there. And I follow her on her Dexcom share. There's a few people that I follow just because they look at me as someone that's kind of an outsider, not a parent. You know, I'm not going to chastise them, but I'm kind of a safety net for Lauren when she travels. That's cool. And so she's seven hours ahead of me, and she is having roller coaster blood sugars. And I'm talking up to high, down to low, up to high, down to low. And I mean h, i and l, O, W, and so we're in constant contact, and she's just staying in a place with a 20 year old kid who has no understanding of type one diabetes. She ends up having to administer her own glucagon. So I just kept her on the phone for a couple hours, and we just hung out while I worked, and I kept her safe and just watching her graph and trying to help her, I just finally said, You know what, Lauren, I know you're not going to want to hear this. You're scaring me. Your numbers are scaring me. The fact that you have large ketones are scaring me. You need to be in a hospital. And she said that I'm in Austria. I'm afraid of the language barrier. I'm afraid they're not going to know what to do. And I said, You need to be where the right equipment is and get the help. And I think if Lauren didn't know me and didn't know Jesse's story, I don't know that she would have gone to the hospital, but she went and she she was very grateful. She said, Thank you for pushing me. I was in severe I was severely dehydrated, and I was definitely in DKA. Now, had she gone, kept going at home, I don't know what would have happened to Lauren. And so I, when I when I hear that, you know that lets me sleep at night, that I helped Lauren, that I know that Lauren went to a hospital simply because she knew Jesse's story. And I'm sure there's other parents all over the world that I don't even know, know of Jesse's story, and probably had a similar situation. And you

Scott Benner 33:44
and I have never spoken before this, and we don't, we don't know each other, and yet you come into my mind frequently, yeah, yeah, and so, and it's always wrapped around this issue, and I don't want to, it's funny, we always talk about this community online, but and I wonder if people realize when they're in it, I'm kind of going backwards, but when they're in it, that they're not that they're likely not going to be in it forever. And so as a person who has had a blog for 10 years, and I'm sure that you have a similar idea, the names and the avatars, they come and they go, and they come and they go, and people get in there, and they either get the information they need, or they stay till they're comfortable, or whatever it ends up being. But in the moment that they're there, they believe that this is the world, that it's always been like this, and it'll always be like this, and they've just added themselves to it. And what I know as an outsider looking from, you know, a back a little bit that in six months, they'll stop coming around, they'll understand insulin, they'll not be scared anymore. They'll get the answers they need, the comfort they need, whatever it ends up being, and they'll go back to living their lives. I always feel good when I see people disappear. You know, when I see them leave, I always imagine that they just have everything they need and they just want. Go back to their life and and at the same time, when you see somebody who is just so fervently, just arguing or trying to make points, or what did this person do? Like that whole thing, I think they're missing the point of it. The there's this there's this comfort there. There are some people who have been there for so long, they could come really help, like you did with Lauren and and I just wonder if sometimes it's not lost on them that they're not the driving force of what's happening, that the the entity is the driving force of it. I don't know if that makes any sense, or even why I got off on that tangent, to be perfectly honest with you, but it just always, it always strikes me when someone's raining or raving or or coming out, like they're just like, I know what to do. And I'm like, Yeah, I feel like you've been here for three weeks. But go ahead, tell everyone what to do, and you know, and then and then, and they get going, and then and then, I always look at the threads and I think, oh my gosh, this person asked a simple question. There is a simple answer to it. You can agree or disagree that I know what that answer is. And then six people come in and say six different things. And I always try to picture the person either and going, I asked a question, six people answered six different ways. I don't know what to do now. Like, who do I randomly pick? Do I just take the person whose avatar looks the most pleasing to Me and decide to believe them? Like, how does it end up working? But to know that there's someone like you who you can trust. What's coming from them is huge. And I think that those are as are the community, even though the people who are maybe the loudest in it or the most active, maybe they may never know that, you know, but, but so it's a it's a really huge thing you're doing, and I think I'm thanking you in a very long, convoluted

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 36:45
the do see, you know, the whole online community, it's such a resource. And the same breath, when I meet a newly diagnosed family, I say, just be so careful on the do see, because there are the shamers. The shamers being the ones that say, Oh, my child's never been above 170 I'm calling the F on that, okay, because we've all been there. And, you know, you're not magic, you're not a unicorn. You know, there's the shamers and those people that know everything, or, you know, they're there. I think some of the D, O, C has gotten a little bit, dare I say, out of control again. I'm probably gonna get my throat cut to that. But there are some, I mean, I've been blocked from a major one that I never have once made a comment on. Never once they

Scott Benner 37:33
just decided you were out, huh?

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 37:34
I got I got shun based on somebody else I knew. And I'm like, Why did I get shown from that, but turns out, I don't really care. But you know what I mean? It's just, it's like, it's a drama filled, you know, do see situation, and I don't need to be there, but, like, I warn people, it's like, just be careful the information you're seeking and where you're seeking. It wasn't,

Scott Benner 37:53
I'll be, I'll be completely honest. If you asked me, my honest answer would be, there's good information, there's bad information, and there are crazy people. You have to figure out what those three things are, yeah, yeah. And so it just, it, just, I maybe can stay out of it a little more. I know this is going to sound completely backwards, like I'm in 1982 or that I, you know, voted for Donald Trump or something, but, but I think because I'm a guy, I don't get it as hard, you know, I think there's something to that. I think that I'm not one of the moms that it just doesn't it doesn't hit me as hard, but I still get it. You know, for every this will sound like humble bragging, but you know, for every 10 emails that are like, Hey, I listened to your podcast and my kids a 1c is down two points. Thank you very much. I didn't understand how to do this, or I never thought about this before. You know, every once in a while, you hear from somebody who's like, you're a pompous jerk, and you think you know everything. And I'm like, I don't think I know anything. I'm trying to tell you what works for me do whatever you want with that, you know, and so, and at the same time, I've had someone yell and rant and rave at me, because I, you know, I let my daughter eat whatever she wants to within a certain degree, we deal with it with instant. So I get hammered for that. And and, and I just have taken a very interesting tactic where I don't care, and so I just really, I pay no mind to it, and I do sometimes. I do sometimes. Thank the fact that a number of years ago, I wrote a parenting book, and I got these reviews, and the reviews were mostly very glowing, and then some of them were not. And then I just realized it was like, someone read this book and loved it, and someone read this book and hated it, I'm not in control of that, you know, like I can't possibly be in control of that. And I think of this the same way, my information is not dangerous. I always preface what I'm going to say. We'll say it right now. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making changes to your medical plan. There, I'm not telling you what to do, and so you do whatever you want. And at the same time, please don't yell at me, because I don't like that, but I am just going to delete it if you always,

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 39:55
you know, you make an interesting point. And like, you know, like I said, beyond type. One has given me a really good voice. And like I said, I appreciate them, and I did an article about etiquette. When you hear in the D, O, C, that someone has passed away, how do you handle yourself? And like, one of the biggest things I say is don't make this about you. And you know, don't, don't reach out to that parent, because I understand the empathy I understand. Oh my gosh, I too, have a child with type one diabetes. You're living my worst nightmare. Yeah, we know we're living your worst nightmare. You telling me that you still have a child that is breathing isn't helping me. You're helping yourself. You're making yourself feel better. You're not making me feel any better. So just, I just say, Stop yourself. Don't post on their, you know, funeral page, don't, you know, gosh, my child has diabetes, you know? And you know, I

Scott Benner 40:47
can commiserate with this, yeah? Because you can't, yeah. Draw, draw a strong line to your point with this. Almost every wedding toast, or someone who stands up at a funeral, who these people try to speak about the departed, or they try to speak about the people getting married. But if you really listen to what they're saying, they're telling stories about themselves, even when people don't mean to do it, it's hard for them not to relate things back to themselves. It really is a very human trait, you know, like, I boy, I can't say who, but I remember sitting at a wedding, listening, and I was like, Is this person ever gonna mention the bride and groom? Or no, I don't think, I don't think they're going to No, no, this is all about them. They but they thought, they thought, thought they were talking about the bride and groom. It was fascinating. Yeah, you know,

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 41:38
I really do believe the majority of people, they absolutely mean well. And I know that. And you know, like, I always tell people to it's like, if you don't know what to say, just say, I don't know what to say, if that's okay, that's saying something, yeah, or don't say anything. It's okay. But it's it's amazing to me. Like, in an article about etiquette and explaining, don't, and I write, don't. Don't ask the person what happened. If they want to share, they're going to share. I say that in my article, and I will kid you not in the thread that follows on beyond type one, I was completely attacked by people saying she's not telling us what's happened. She we have a right to know. We have a right. She's hiding something. I'm like, by God, you did not read my article. So my article says, Don't ask me. I'm telling you not to ask me. And you're, you're telling me, I have to tell you, No, I don't, I don't have to tell you. And you know what, there are people who have asked me, and I, of course, tell them, you know, detailed information, and it just, it's, it's a right moment or a wrong moment, and I get to choose when that is and or who it is. Or, you know, it's like simple things tangent wise is like, you know, you're shopping at Target, and someone asked me, you know, because they're looking at the groceries I have on the card or whatever, like, oh, how many kids do you have? I don't get into details because I'm not going to forage a friendship with the cashier, right? I have four kids. I don't need to elaborate. Now, if it's someone I value in my life, I'm going to say I have four children. Unfortunately, my son, Jesse, actually passed away when he was 13, because I know I'm going to have a relationship with that person, and it's worth me telling and going through pain where and actually putting that person through pain, right? Because the target cashier really probably doesn't want to

Scott Benner 43:26
know that, and I wasn't trying to make you feel badly. And now they think they did and they probably didn't. And so here's what we've learned. I think, Michelle, shut up is the is the it's the right thing to do. It's everyone shut up. Don't, don't. You don't have any thoughts you you haven't perfectly crafted your comment to be the exact right comment. You know, you don't have a story that's so close to someone else's that they're going to be happy to hear it, that this person is going through such a multi faceted thing on an emotional level that you'll never understand. Just don't, just don't, you know, like there's nothing you can do, you know, make a donation to a diabetes charity in the kid's name, but then don't go out in the world and tell anybody. Do it for yourself. Don't do it for someone else, or so that someone else knows what a great person you are, or so that you can feel better about it, or feel comfortable it's not about you. Somebody had a horrible tragedy. Leave them alone. Am I close? Is that close? Or have I gone too far? Have you hung up like, you know what? That was too hard line for me.

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 44:30
I mean, like I said this, you know, this book by, I believe her name is Amanda Miller, I literally just shared it with, I mean, it was so poignant and and just explaining, like, what, what we're feeling, how we're feeling it, and the best thing you can do is just be supportive. You can be supportive and loving without understanding, if that makes sense. No, it does. I don't want you to ever go into your brain and try to imagine what it feels like not to have your child. No one should feel that pain. I don't wish that upon. My worst enemy, because I know what it feels like. I want everyone to stay in their bubble, their happy bubble, really honestly, for as long as they humanly can, because it's a really nice place. You don't really realize how nice it is until you're on the other side of

Scott Benner 45:12
it. And it's not just with the death of a loved one or a child, by the way, too. You will eventually get out of that bubble. Like I remember being a young person in my 20s who was just married. I was like, this is all perfect, until the first time that, like, my hot water heater broke. And I was like, life's not as perfect as I thought it was. And then I fought with my wife one time. I was like, Oh my gosh. How did that happen? And then, you know, like, just your bubble continues to degradate it. It breaks down over time, until, and I hate to sound like, you know, but till the till the actuality of the real world hits you from all sides, like you can only insulate yourself for so long, hold on to this part of it for absolutely as long as you can. Don't let this part go. You can assume that the election might have been rigged by Russians. You can think that your neighbor probably is a bad guy who is dumping bleach in your Bush because he doesn't like the way it's blocking his driveway. That all that stuff is probably happening. It's okay to know that, but try to stay, try to stay blissfully ignorant about this, right? Just it's always going to be great. Everything's going to be great. I love my kids, I love my life, I love everything. And this is always going to be like this, because one day when it's not, yeah, it's going

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 46:16
to hit you, right? You don't know. And that's always my advice to people. I say, please just go let your type one live their life, because you don't know when anybody's bus is going to hit, so just go live. That's the best advice I can give to anybody, and that's that's why I keep doing what I do at riding on insulin and and watching all these kids and and the adult. I mean, you know, I have, you know, 100 endurance athletes all over the US and Canada, that race, you know, with type one diabetes, and like, I see them living life and mentoring and speaking and, you know, telling people to live their best life. I mean, that's, that's how to live it, yeah.

Scott Benner 46:54
But do you remember the egg crack challenge? Okay, so the boy that that was for who I can't believe but his name is, it's just slipping my mind at the moment, I interviewed his. I interviewed his. Karen Mendo, oh, yes, thank you. I interviewed, I interviewed Miss hover, yeah, year, a year ago, and in the course of that, that conversation, the one thing that stuck with me, it sticks with me every day I might think about her constantly, is that she said that no matter what the outcome with her son was, even though he passed away, she would not have changed anything about how he lived his life. And she just talked about how happy he was and how Grady was doing at college, and he was the captain of his lacrosse team at school, and that he was a happy, fulfilled person, and that she thought if she restricted that because of diabetes and he got an extra day, she just didn't think that that those days would have been valuable, as valuable as him just living his life. And man, I really do think about that all the time, because it is easy. It is very easy to wax poetic about this, like, live your life. The bus might hit you, like all that stuff, and I believe it, but to really do it that's like, that's top level brass balls. Like she's she believes that now today, as much as she did then, and I give her a ton of credit, and I think you fall right in that same category. So I just think it's just a wonderful message for people you really do just need to live for today and be happy not worry about what's gonna happen tomorrow. You kind of can't, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 48:27
She's a friend of mine, and she is part of our group. She's found us. She's a she's an amazing lady, so she still has a big, loud voice out there,

Scott Benner 48:36
just to stick to your guns after that, to not one time go, You know what? Okay, maybe I would have changed like to not do that is such a respectful position for her son, you know what I mean like, and for her family and her life and their decisions and all those other things I I'm always there's a couple of people I think about a lot when I look at my daughter, because it is not, it is not a stretch to be going along, living your life just as easy as could be, getting great blood sugars for weeks on end. Hey, my a one sees 5.8 I'm kicking this right in the butt. I should start taking care of other people's kids. I'm so good at this, blah, blah, blah, like really starting to feel it, you know. And you could be going along as well as that. And still, sometimes I walk into my daughter's room at night to, you know, look at her CGM, test her blood sugar, turn off the fan, whatever it is I'm gonna do. And every once in a while, I do look at her and I think, My God, is she gonna make it the whole way? Like, maybe not, right, you know. But I never think that of my son, but he stands on a baseball field with someone throwing a ball 100 miles an hour, and I never think I wonder if that ball hit him in the head and kill him. Like, I never think that, you know, and in the end, both are fairly likely. So isn't it weird how being attached to the disease then suddenly makes you feel like, oh, is this something I need to be focused on more. Michelle, let me tell you a secret. I don't drive this. Hate limit, you know, and it's funny, and it's funny. I never think I'm about to slaughter my whole family. It never occurs to me, you know, never once. And so you can get yourself in the right mindset. And I think you proved earlier by what you were talking about that there is no mindset that you can't become happy with if you if you work at it hard enough and have the right support. Honestly,

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 50:21
I get asked. I get asked all the time, you know, why do I choose to continue in diabetes? Like, how do I do that? How do I how do I put myself around the disease every day? And I, you know, that's my way of grieving, that's healing and coping. Like, first it was coping, and then it became healing to be around others that I get to still accept that as part of my life, and I don't know any different, like I want to help other kids. I want to make sure another family doesn't go through what I go through. And the piece that and people who've heard me speak have seen this because I use it as a PowerPoint slide. Is about three weeks after Jesse died, I was feeling very, very sorry for myself, and sitting at my dining room table crying, like, what am I going to do with my life? And you know, this is horrifying, and you know, everything, every thought you can think of, and I got my nail and one of his teachers sent me his last writing assignment, and she's like, Oh, I, you know. And it was a very kind of like, oh, by the way, I thought you might want this. And I'm thinking, Oh my god. Thinking, Oh, my God, you have no idea what this piece of paper means to me. And it was a, it was his last essay that he had to type or write up, his handwritten actually, and he could write about any topic he wanted. And the topic was, my mom is courageous. And the entire, the entire thing, just in detail, this is a kid who said, mom stopped talking about diabetes. He would say it all the time, but in writing, he put I am so proud of my mom. She does the JDRF bike ride every year, and if that wasn't enough, she became a director of JDRF, and if that wasn't enough, she decided to do an Iron Man for me, and I got to cross the finish line with her, and she did a documentary, and he just keeps going. And he said, I just am so proud that my mom has always put me and my diabetes first. So for me, it was just like, well, there you go. Jesse has told me what I'm going to do with my life, and that's why I do what I do. It

Scott Benner 52:19
meant so much to him that you were on his side like that, and now you're just on everybody's side. I, you know, I was gonna make a comparison, and now it just seems small, so I'm not going to, but just gonna let it go. But I think that a lot of people who stay in the community and work really hard like this, I think they feel very similarly. I think that it's just you, just you said it before. Like, how do you this is what you know. How do you stop doing it, right? How do you I some days feel like, sometimes you see online, someone who's struggling with something, then you're like, wow, it's such a simple fix. I wish I wasn't running out the door right now. I would just send them a message and say, you know, if you call me right now in 15 minutes, I can explain this to you. You know, like, I don't want you to struggle like this anymore. Like, I don't want your kid to feel like that. I don't. I don't want to live knowing that somewhere you are broken down in your house because you can't figure out this simple thing that I know the answer to. And at the same time, I can't spend my entire life talking to people about things like this, but you found a way to dedicate a ton of your life to it. I'm trying to do it with a podcast. You're doing it with your work and and there are a lot of people doing it in a lot of different ways, and I think that's the core of what the community is, and it's obviously driven by stories like yours, with Jesse's letter and and just tons of other people who have had impactful moments in their lives that have that have drawn them to want to help somebody else. You're everything you said is beautiful here. Thank you. I appreciate you doing this

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 53:52
well. Thanks for having me

Scott Benner 53:53
on. This is enough. This was a you know, when you have to thank me. Now stop it. So let me, let me, let me. We have to do something pleasant, and I'll beat for a second. Hold on. Would you share your favorite happy memory of Jesse with me?

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 54:10
Oh my gosh. Favorite happy memory? Well, I don't know if you've ever seen Have you ever seen like a little green Jesse was here. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but I use it a lot in my photos. So summer of 2009 right before he passed, we all, we went on a family camping trip, all the kids, and we were, we were, I don't even know how to explain it. It's Wisconsin, right? So you're up north, kind of hick. I don't know how to play it. So the camping spot had a it was a makeshift shed that they kind of turned into a bar. We're all inside, because it's Wisconsin. You can bring your kids into bars. Yep, I shamelessly just told you that my

Scott Benner 54:52
brother lives in Wisconsin, drinking beer was like the state sport, I think, isn't it? If not for the Packers, it would be like. A legal thing is so I'm sorry. So why not bring your kid to a bar? I live in Wisconsin, I understand.

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 55:05
Go ahead. So, so we're there, and the walls are this dark green, and the people that own the place give you these gold markers, and you can write all over. So there's writing on every single wall. And so I write on the wall, my daughter writes on the wall. And then, and then there's the at the time, it was 12 year old, Jesse, and he simply writes, Jesse was here on the wall. And why did I take pictures of him writing that? I have no idea, but it was this fun moment. And he wrote, Jesse was here. And so he passes away. And this is kind of a crazy story, because it goes beyond just a favorite memory of Jesse, but that clearly was a favorite. And there's some reason why I took a picture, I you know, and I'm sitting with my brother, and I said, Oh my God, they're gonna, they're gonna paint over that someday, like every year, that's what they do. They just paint over start again and start over. And the new people that come to this campground write their new memories and thoughts. So I said to my brother, I need you to go up there and use part of Memorial Fund to cut that out, and we'll redo it, and we'll whatever it takes, but I need to own that real estate, that piece of the wall, and he goes up there, and it's it's it's foreclosed. Bank foreclosed on it. So it's locked up. I'm not going to say how I got it, but that piece of real estate is in my living room, and it is something that every year on the anniversary of his death, which is February 3. So the number 23 I don't know if you've seen that, but 23 has become his number, and it's used all over the world because of February 3, and people changed their profile picture to that, that Jesse was here, and it's become kind of a movement. And you know, jdrs is even, you know, mile 23 of every JDRF bike ride is a mile of silence in his honor, artists have changed drawings and put 23 in it, and I own actually the 23rd print of something that they did in honor of Jesse. So I guess happiest memory is that I'm so glad that I have that piece of him that he wrote, and that people are inspired by that. But and here's a goofy, funny, funny Damn kid like he, he was very contagious in his his mannerisms and his way of dealing like, you know, you have to walk through like, a really crappy part of this, our city to get to school, like we are sub our subdivision kind of was in kind of a lower income area, and all the kids loved him, like every kid would talk to him, and he'd talk about, you know, if that kid wants to beat me up, I just say, Hey, I bought some Cheetos. Want some Cheetos? You know, he just had this way about him. And, you know, there's still a plaque that hangs at his his middle school about him and inspires others, and I'm just proud of who he was. I wouldn't give up one single day of those 13 years that I had with him.

Scott Benner 58:12
Well, I appreciate you sharing that that's spectacular. And even as I asked the question, I was like, What a dumb question. Why would I say that you answered? And I was like, wow, I've worked out. Okay, oh my gosh. Well, I'm just, you know, we're up on an hour. I don't want to keep you any longer, but I just genuinely appreciate that you came on, and thank you for having me on. No, you're very welcome. Is there anything that you want people to know? I mean, is there a Facebook group, something that you

Michelle Bauer (Alswager) 58:38
know? The thing, I guess, is if people are still listening to what I had to say, would be if, if you if, if you know of a family who who loses to type one, and know them, you know the right thing to do is connect them, you know, like, with a group like mine. Because, man, I would have done anything to have my group when Jesse passed, I I needed to know there were other people who stood in my shoes and understood, don't try to fix them. You know, I see some deal the do see, like, try to manage those people, and we're here for you, and, yeah, you're there for them. But like, don't make it about yourself and just pass them on to this group. Like, it's not even my group. I don't it's not even my group, it's, it's, it's everybody's group that's a parent who's lost and and, you know, connect them with me. I'm happy to you know, on Facebook, it's called families of type one losses. And you know, it's only for the parents. So if I get a request from someone who's just wanting to see what we're talking about, they don't get added. It's definitely a place for the parents to breathe and have privacy and and feel the hurt maybe a little bit, yeah,

Scott Benner 59:47
and people who have a very special set of tools that they can help you with, and they're not, they're not tools you have. So let them get to that families of type one loss, yeah, okay, all right. So. Well, I hope you have a happy holiday. Merry Christmas, and your new year is fantastic. Have a great day. Scott, you too. Bye, bye.

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breakthrough T 1d who, of course, formerly was the JDRF put out a lovely blog post about the accident. I'd like to read it to you now. It says the leadership staff and volunteers of breakthrough T 1d mourn the tragic sudden loss of 5t 1d champions on Friday, November 1 2024 that night, five people who were pillars of the breakthrough T 1d ride community died in a tragic single car accident. The group included two married couples and one single individual, all very close friends and veteran breakthrough T 1d ride participants. All five people were inside the vehicle at the time, and there were no bicycles involved. Understandably, the tragedy sent shock waves through the tight knit ride community, as well as the entire breakthrough T 1d organization. Chris Eaton a lead volunteer partner for breakthrough T 1d ride, and the ride Advisory Council knew all five people well. Ride is the greatest group of people you wish you didn't need to know. Our friends embodied that feeling of inclusion, hope and a steadfast focus on getting to a cure, said Chris, they will be sorely missed by their families, friends and the ride community. Jeff and Michelle Bauer were highly involved in breakthrough T 1d ride especially Michelle the breakthrough T 1d RIDE program is a family, and Michelle exemplified this, day in and day out, said Anthony garrossi, National Director of ride and endurance, Michelle has been a dedicated T 1d advocate since her son, Jesse, was diagnosed with type one diabetes in 2000 at the age of three, tragically and unexpectedly, Jesse passed away at the age of 13 on February 3, 2010, after Jesse passed away, Michelle continued to advocate, educate and push the envelope in His name in honor of Jesse, the day he died, and generally, all people who have passed away from T 1d mile 23 of each breakthrough T 1d ride is written in silence, whether it was riding 1000s of miles in memory of her late son, Jesse authoring a book to help grieving families, Bringing her husband, Jeff Bauer, into the ride family to join, to joining the ride Advisory Council. Michelle was all in. Anthony added in her spare time. Michelle had a number, excuse me, in her spare time, Michelle had numerous other T, 1d focused projects, including Jesse was here, which encompassed her work with other families around the world who had lost loved ones to T 1d Jeff proposed to Michelle in 2018 at mile 23 of a breakthrough T 1d ride. The couple had a lake house in Wisconsin and spent a lot of time there. They were avid boaters. Jeff and Michelle are survived by their blended family of five children, Alexander Bauer, Claudia Bauer, Samantha al swagger, Joseph alswager and Sarah alswager, all of whom are now adults. Josh and Tammy Stahl became close friends with the Bowers through the RIDE program. They rode together mostly, most recently, in late August, Josh started riding in 2010 for his and Tammy son, Gavin, who is now 17, who lives with type one diabetes. Josh had completed and competed in 13 rides, including Lake Tahoe, lacrosse and Death Valley. I've been fortunate enough to talk to Josh and Tammy at rides over the decades, said Dan Wolf, Executive Director of breakthrough t1 DS Wisconsin chapter, who has long been involved with ride, most recently in La Crosse, excuse me, were where we traded stories of our spirit jerseys, kids. Rides and what makes the RIDE program special? Which are the friends you make along the way? Josh and tam are survived by their son, Gavin Stahl and Blake Stahl Barry Sievers first ride was 10 years ago. He had completed five rides, including Nashville, Loveland, La Crosse, while he had no direct type one diabetes connection, he was always willing to help with a smile. He hosted training rides at his house and even helped transport bikes with his trailer. Barry's infectious smile and boundless energy embodied our team Wisconsin Spirit wrote Joe Brady and Scott Hagan in a statement they issued together. Joe lives with type one diabetes, is a veteran ride Coach Scott and Scott is Barry's best friend who recruited him for his first ride a decade ago. Barry was the senior financial manager of an Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is survived by his adult son, David, and two school aged daughters, Emma and Addison. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. You.