#1445 Hippy Dippy

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Morganne’s homestead upbringing shaped her views on medicine, but T1D changed everything. From hidden family history to Bluetooth fears—this one’s unique.

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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 00:00 Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Morgan 00:14 My name is Morgan. I've been diabetic for three years. Upcoming in November here, I'm not sure what to say at the beginning, really to describe me just adult female that didn't think I'd have to do this at 18 years old,

Scott Benner 00:27 nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but blue circle health is a non profit that's offering a totally free virtual type one diabetes clinical care, education and support program for adults 18 and up. You heard me right, free. No strings attached, just free. Currently, if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama or Missouri, you're eligible for blue circle health right now, but they are adding states quickly in 2025 so make sure to follow them at Blue circle health on social media and make yourself familiar with blue circle health.org. Blue circle health is free. It is without cost. There are no strings attached. I am not hiding anything from you. Blue circle health.org, you know why they had to buy an ad. No one believes it's free. I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year where CGM, that's one insertion and one CGM a year, one CGM one year, not every 10 or 14 days ever since cgm.com/juice box, if you or a loved one, was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective the bowl 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, where you can go to Juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. My

Morgan 02:31 name is Morgan. I've been diabetic for three years. Upcoming in November here, I'm not sure what to say at the beginning, really, to describe me, just Yeah, adult female, that didn't think I'd have to do this at 18 years old.

Scott Benner 02:45 You're how old now at 2121 diagnosed at 18, had diabetes for three years and an adult female, I like you. You introduced yourself like, like you were on a form. Adult female, 5755, actually, five, five, I don't know kilos, so I don't want to

Morgan 03:03 guess. I don't even know it's waving pounds. So

Scott Benner 03:08 you were, do you feel like your diagnosis came out of nowhere? Absolutely,

Morgan 03:13 I was farm raised, so, like, really healthy immune system. But we never went to the doctor. I never had a, like, family doctor or anything. We just, if we were sick, you'd sleep it off and drink tons of water, which, ironically, it was very bad advice for me, considering it took a long time to get diagnosed.

Scott Benner 03:32 Okay, I just You made me think of that, um, packaging. What is it? Farm Raised, grass fed, uh huh, grain finish, pretty

Morgan 03:38 much something like that. A little crunchy hippie dippie. That's where my parents are, yeah. How

Scott Benner 03:43 does that work? By the way, like they finish, like some people finish the beef with a little grain for flavor, even though they've been grass fed. Is that right?

Unknown Speaker 03:53 I have no

Morgan 03:55 idea. We're like, small, small, like hobby farms. So we had cows, but we always fed them as much, like non grain stuff as possible. Okay, so we got them good hay, and, gotcha, we had a good pasture. So, yeah, apparently there's

Scott Benner 04:07 a whole theory about feeding them grass, but then finishing them off with grain before you slaughter

Morgan 04:12 them. I don't know. Maybe it's the sweetness and the GMO. I

Scott Benner 04:15 have no idea. But wait, tell me more about the farm. What's a hobby farm? Because a lot of, first of all, Morgan. How do you say your name Morgan?

Morgan 04:23 It's French. It's actually Morgan, but my dad's Quebecois and my mom's English from Ontario. So that was a very interesting mix. They didn't know each other's language when they met tree planting out here in BC. Oh,

Scott Benner 04:35 they are hippies, very they are hippie Tippie. Oh, yeah. Did that translate to you, not

Morgan 04:41 entirely other than I smoke weed and I have some similar beliefs, but like, not as extensive. I gotta

Scott Benner 04:48 say, if weed smoking makes you a hippie at this point, I think that's been I think we're all hippies,

Morgan 04:55 not you, though you're good. Oh,

Scott Benner 04:57 you say that. But who knows I am? I try it. I got my stress too. Oh, that's fair. So okay, because I was looking at I'm like, am I mispronouncing this? There's a lot of extra letters in your name, but Morgan, there

Morgan 05:08 is, yeah, Morgan, okay. Well, and on the end of Morgan, Morgan, how's the English way to say it? I suppose, a

Scott Benner 05:16 hobby farm. Like, it doesn't make money, right? Like you don't live off it,

Morgan 05:20 no. Well, we live off it. It just supplies us, basically. So we have enough chickens for us, enough goats for us, enough cows for us. We got, like, quails, pigs at times, we had rabbits. Oh my gosh, I wanted rabbits when I was younger, and so I went to my dad. I'm like, hey, hey, can we get bunnies? Because I'd seen friends with, like, pet bunnies. And my dad is like, we're not going to get anything that doesn't supply some kind of profit to the farm. I'm like, let's get meat rabbits. We'll eat them when they're older.

Speaker 1 05:43 Meat, they're delicious. Wait, what kind of rabbits are you're good eating

Morgan 05:48 Flemish giants. They're a meat free I wanted baby rabbits.

Scott Benner 05:53 Dad's like, if it can't, like, poop on something and make it grow, or I can't eat it, we're not buying it, pretty much. Yeah. So wait, your parents showed up in BC to plant trees

Morgan 06:05 when they were younger, like they had left their houses. They did some backpacking down in Mexico, separate but, like, at the same time. And then they also, they met planting trees up here at Queen Charlotte Islands. And then they moved back. Yeah,

Scott Benner 06:18 you're old enough now. Okay, you can, you can ask them, like, come on, you just did that to get laid back then, right? Like, that's, they're

Morgan 06:25 definitely not those kind of people, really. It would have been like, Oh, we're helping the environment, and it's a good way to make money. Because I think, like, it's, it was pretty good pay. I think it's still pretty good. Now, I'm not too sure, though, but I know that they said that it was pretty good back then they pay you to show up and plant the trees. I think so, yeah, I don't think it was a volunteer process. I think you'd show up in a group and you get paid, and then, like, however many trees you plant, you get paid by the tree. I think is what my dad explained. It less hippie, a little less hippy, yeah, but they are still like, Oh my goodness. They have a farmstead Now out here, and they'd like, self rely on most things, and they've cut out, like they turn off the Wi Fi at night,

Scott Benner 07:03 and they turn off the Wi Fi at night, yes, yeah,

Morgan 07:07 because of the waves of the Wi Fi being detrimental to health, yeah. Oh, okay, they wouldn't be happy to figure out, well, they weren't very happy to figure out that my Dexcom stuff is Bluetooth. I didn't tell them when I was diagnosed in the hospital. I My dad was actually picking up my brother when I got out of the hospital, and that's when he found out, because I was just getting back tell

Scott Benner 07:29 me now that you thoughtfully while being diagnosed with type one diabetes, considered I shouldn't tell my dad. This thing is Bluetooth. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 and just as the name says, it lasts for a full year, imagine for a second a CGM with just one sensor placement and one warm up period every year. Imagine a sensor that has exceptional accuracy over that year and is actually the most accurate CGM in the low range that you can get. What if I told you that this sensor had no risk of falling off or being knocked off? That may seem too good to be true, but I'm not even done telling you about it. Yet. The Eversense 365 has essentially no compression lows. It features incredibly gentle adhesive for its transmitter. You can take the transmitter off when you don't want to wear your CGM and put it right back on without having to waste the sensor or go through another warm up period. The app works with iOS and Android, even Apple Watch. You can manage your diabetes instead of your CGM with the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM,

Morgan 08:45 yep, part of me did think that for a second. It was more so now I'm dependent on a drug, and that was the one thing my parents did not want for me.

Scott Benner 08:55 Yeah. Well, you get over that pretty quick. Oh yeah,

Morgan 08:58 pretty damn quick.

Scott Benner 09:01 I like you. So far. Morgan, this is going good. I appreciate you having a good headset too. What do you use that thing for in your regular life?

Morgan 09:08 I bought it for this. Oh, you have a quality that you want it to sound good. And so I bought a headset. It was on clearance at the source because they're wiping out into a Best Buy. And so I got it. This

Scott Benner 09:20 is so weird. Can I share something with you? Sure I think I'm gonna cry. No, don't cry. No, no, no. This

Morgan 09:26 early, I have more to tell you.

Scott Benner 09:28 I'm having such a bad couple of days. And then, just to think that you were like, I want this to sound good. I'll go buy a headset. It really like, God, this is where I'm at today. This is, I'm sorry. I feel so grateful. Thank you. God. I feel like, now I feel like a hippie, Jesus Christ. All right, oh, God, I got so sad for a second. Like, happy, sad. I was like, she did a thing that was so nice. Oh, okay. All right, let's get past this. This is ridiculous. Okay, parents, I was gonna make a joke about your dad planning one last thing before he got done. I'm gonna let that go. Because you're 21 and then now we're here. So any other type one in your family, or auto immune stuff in your family? No, so

Morgan 10:07 no type one that I know of other than I did ask my grandmother, and this is where I figured it's probably come from, on my mom's side, way back in the day, there were some kids that died young. They didn't know why. I'm like, I'm willing to bet they died of decay, and they just were never diagnosed, talking about, like 100 years ago, or more, probably, yeah, something like that. Like 100 even, like 80 years ago. Like there was a few different kids that died young at like 11 or so in the family. It's on my mom's side, yeah.

Scott Benner 10:33 Okay, how about other autoimmune stuff for you? No, nothing that's been diagnosed,

Morgan 10:37 apart from, I don't know that. Nothing, really, my parents are definitely not part of the going to go get diagnosed types. Uh oh. Do

Scott Benner 10:46 you think your parents have autoimmunities that they just don't? They might,

Morgan 10:50 yeah, for sure. Uh, PCOS, actually, my grandmother, if that's considered, I don't know, my grandmother had her left ovary removed when she was younger because it wrapped around like, 14 times. Yeah, yeah. And then I also had, we'll get to that. But I also had my own run in with it

Scott Benner 11:06 as well. You had your own run in with PCOS, I'm

Morgan 11:08 assuming, not diagnosed, but I've had an ovarian cyst twice.

Scott Benner 11:13 What do you do for it? Is it like, what? What are we talking about? Like, harsh periods, acne, yes, a weird,

Morgan 11:19 oh my gosh, yeah, acne all over, harsh periods. One week it'll be normal. One week it'll be like, heavy. One week it'll be like, just not there at all. It'll skip. Very odd. But I also have, and this is the I did put this into the interview request. I have a birth defect. Oh no, it's here. Coordinate uterus.

Scott Benner 11:37 You know? It's here. It says I have a wacky birth defect. I do. Yeah,

Morgan 11:41 it's a bicarnate uterus. So it's called a heart shaped uterus. It happened when I was in my mom's womb. And apparently, most people don't get diagnosed with it, because they only find it after they've had, like, a whole bunch of miscarriages, okay, but when they went into ultrasound my ovarian cyst, they

Scott Benner 11:57 they found it two for one kind of a situation, apparently.

Morgan 12:00 So this was only two months after I was diagnosed. Oh, that

Scott Benner 12:03 sucks. And does this mean you can't have kids? I don't know. I haven't

Morgan 12:07 tried. I'm not sure how fertile or whatnot. I've not done like, any tests or anything. I'm not interested in kids at this current moment in life, 21 still too young Tom. What is it called? Again, by? What? By, cornea, uterus. You can look it up. It'll show you a picture. It's pretty funky. I am trying to look it up right now, but yeah, I woke up 630 in the middle of the morning in excruciating pain. Now, of course, women, we get period poops, we got to run to the toilet, so I thought it was one of those. But as soon as I stood up, I started feeling really faint and like I started losing vision. I thought it was my blood sugar, so I went back to my phone, checked I was not, like, low or anything. I think it was at like, nine or something, so it was pretty high. Actually, figured it wasn't that, but I was panicking. So I called my grandma. We went to the ER, and they tried to say appendicitis, but I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, listen to me. This is an ovarian thing. They checked the same day with an ultrasound, and lo and behold, I was right. Wow.

Scott Benner 13:00 Heart Shaped uterus appears indented or heart shaped with a dip or cleft at the top. Yeah.

Morgan 13:06 We're not sure how deviated it is, because they come in various Yeah. Well, I

Scott Benner 13:10 guess you won't find out till you try to plant some trees. I guess what? Some tree planting boy starts talking to

Morgan 13:17 you. Uh, yeah, no, mine likes to drive excavators. Oh, you have

Scott Benner 13:20 you found a boy already? Yeah, he's pretty sweet. Oh, good for you. And he drives what back hoes,

Morgan 13:28 no like anything he can get his hands on big machinery. He drives mostly rock truck at work. But he bought himself a mini excavator.

Scott Benner 13:34 He's got like, a little backhoe in his house. He does. I rented one once. Oh, do you want that story? Yes, we bought this house, which was a very long time ago, this very tiny, little house, and it had way too many trees and way too many bushes on it. And one of the things it had was this line of forsythia bushes. These like bright yellow, they're very pretty, but they're dirty, and they just kind of grow under each other. They're like, they're unruly, they're and these had just not been managed for what it felt like decades, and they were just growing into the ground and on top of themselves, they were a mess. So I rented a small like excavator to pop them out with, and then a dumpster to put them into and have them pulled away. And that was going to happen on Saturday. The thing was going to get delivered on Saturday. On Thursday, I was outside, kind of cleaning up, getting ready for all that, and this car pulls up in front of my house. It stops right in front of my house and sits there for like a good long time, long enough that I feel like, well, I have to go down and say something, because I'm either going to be shot from a distance or shot close up. Let's make sure I exceed the attackers, at least in case I live through it. I go down to the road, making it sound like it's very far. It was, like 50 feet. I went down to the road. Oh my god. I got out of my SUV, like I had to drive down. No, I just went down. And I was like, Hey, can I help you? There's this old couple in the car, like, late 60s, maybe even old. Her. And they were like, Oh, I'm so sorry to bother you. And the woman just gets, like, up her nerve, and she puts her hand on her husband, and she says, he built this house. And I said, Oh, you built this house. And he goes, Yeah. He goes. And then she's like, we lived here for this long and and I stopped, and I went, Oh, my god, stop. I'm like, we found a wedding photo in the attic when we moved in, let my wife won't let me get rid of it. Oh, like, my wife won't let me get rid of it because she thinks the person could be dead. And like, it'll like, you know, like some hocus pocus will come upon her. So I run in and I get it, and they're like, No, my God, that's our daughter's wedding portrait. Thank you. And I was like, You're welcome. And I gave it to them, is really lovely. And then we kept talking. And through the course of talking, he explained to me how he built the house, like I actually we tore the house down now, but it was, I don't know if you know this, but used to be able to buy houses at Sears. Does that make sense? Oh, my goodness, really? Yes, you could buy the pieces. And he and his brother would get done work. Every night, they'd go to Sears by the next part of the house, come and install it until finally it was done, which explained why there was newspaper in the walls as insulation. Oh, interesting. But anyway, during the course of this conversation, he points very proudly to the line of forsythia bushes and says, I planted those with my daughter. Oh, and I thought, I'm gonna rip them out of the ground two days from now, but I did not say that. Just

Morgan 16:29 let him live the happiness felt so

Scott Benner 16:31 terrible. And I actually the crazy reason why this is in my head is my brother and I were talking about this the other day because my brother feels bad about making a change to a house he's moving into. Oh, yeah. And I told him I was that I felt like I was just grateful the guy didn't come the following week fair,

Morgan 16:47 yeah, because it had been just a week later, he would have seen he might have even seen them ripped out.

Scott Benner 16:52 Yeah, he might have seen them in a big dead, like wilting pile, like waiting to be picked up. But anyway, I used the mini excavator for that.

Morgan 17:00 Yeah, they're fun. The first night we got it, and we're picking up pallets and stuff and just playing around. It's, they're awesome.

Scott Benner 17:07 I'm glad I found out my, oh, good, no, no, you found out what. I found out my,

Morgan 17:11 my ATV key works in it. I have a Yamaha Kodiak 400 and it. Yeah, the key turns it. You

Scott Benner 17:17 are very Canadian. You're not going to meet a ton of 21 you're year old girls here that are like, I have an ATV.

Morgan 17:26 Well, I got it from inheriting it from my uncle, but yeah, no, it definitely that going out in the bush in the weekends, that's definitely pretty busy of us. That's

Scott Benner 17:34 pretty cool. Okay, so I want to find out more about your diabetes, because people complain that I don't talk about diabetes on my diabetes podcast a lot,

Morgan 17:40 fair enough, I actually have an interesting one for you. Go ahead. Oh, it's very interesting. So I actually wrote it down a little bit and I went back into some of my test results. So if you look back in February 27 2020 my ANC was 5.7 This was before diagnosis. I was November 16, 2021, so 5.7 seems pretty high for a young, six or 17 year old. I think I would have been at the time. I think so. Uh huh. I was taking ferritin test. I was at 12. I checked my TSH, 1.134 Yeah.

Scott Benner 18:12 Your ferritin was low for like, before your diagnosis,

Morgan 18:16 yeah, February, 2020,

Scott Benner 18:18 okay. And did you and how long after that was the uterus thing that

Morgan 18:23 was after my diagnosis. So that was, I think it was January of 2022,

Scott Benner 18:28 I was a lot longer since then. Okay, have you addressed the low iron life art and ever? Not

Morgan 18:33 really, because I brought that home and my mom, she goes, Oh, you eat enough red meats. We I feed you enough good foods. You have enough spinach.

Scott Benner 18:40 But are you tired or weak, or any of the things that come with having low fire

Morgan 18:44 time? Definitely, I had it rerun recently. It was 43

Scott Benner 18:48 when Addie came on and talked about this. She said the endocrinologist that came on to talk about thyroid stuff, she said that a woman of menstruating age, she thinks 70 is bare bones, as low as it should go. Oh, okay.

Morgan 19:03 I've been trying to say that my doctor's like, look, I feel like I'm iron deficient, but I just get, you know, swatted away, because that's their listening skills for you.

Scott Benner 19:10 It's buried in the thyroid episode with her, if you want to

Morgan 19:14 listen, if I haven't already, I might have fallen asleep to that one, so I might not have caught the end. I think

Scott Benner 19:17 it's nice when people fall I fall asleep. It's so comforting, is it? Yeah, okay. I'm glad I really liked it. It's so it does sound strange, though out of context. Like, I like to, like, I'm 21 I like to fall asleep to a podcast made by a 53 year old guy who, every once in a while, talks about diabetes in his diabetes podcast. And so

Morgan 19:38 anybody who doesn't understand won't understand. Anybody who does

Scott Benner 19:41 really does, yeah, when you find a voice that you'll like it, it is comforting. It's soothing. Yeah, all right, we'll get back to your iron thing. So where are you going with this story? So

Morgan 19:50 Well, I started, I'm a lotta. I actually got myself diagnosed. Lada, okay. Now they first thought type one, but I had my C Pep. Rerun. When I was diagnosed, it was 147 which the way that we measure it here is like 300 to 1090 is the normal numbers. So that's pretty low. But recently I got it redone in May, and it's 275

Scott Benner 20:13 so that's why they say that there's an indication for a lot of because this is a very slow onset of this type. One for you.

Morgan 20:19 This is three years after diagnosis, where it jumped back up to just below the normal, like low fish number for people. So I asked the doctor, I said, would this be Lata? And finally, I got a yes,

Scott Benner 20:31 if you are seeing your C peptide go in the other direction, and is your insulin usage fairly low compared to what you expect? Oh, yeah,

Morgan 20:40 so I need the Omnipod. I adore the Omnipod. Thank you, by the way, for giving me the confidence to actually get one. I was too afraid to have something that would be constantly giving me insulin, but once I figured out, you could back out the insulin that was phenomenally just a life changer. I can give myself a quarter of a unit just to bot myself down, yeah, where like half a unit would be too much. I think my total daily dose is like, on average, between sometimes it'll be nine, sometimes it'll be 16. If I'm on my period having really bad hormones, it'll be like 20. And that's

Scott Benner 21:14 total total basal and Bolus. So given that you have PCOS on top of all that, have you considered asking them for like, a GLP medication?

Morgan 21:25 That's what I wanted to ask you. I was really happy to be able to come on here and actually ask you, do you think a GLP might like help me, even though now the issue is, is I have poor appetite already,

Scott Benner 21:40 yeah, so I can tell you how we're trying to get around that with Arden. So first of all, I know it's only 20 minutes in, but not a doctor, not advice. I really seriously. I barely got through high school, okay, but here are the conversations that I've seen on the podcast of recent right? Little girl, 15 years old, using like 70 units a day. She's down to like three or four now, I think her mom texted me recently. It's, you know, like she's still barely, she's off her pump. She's barely using any insulin, etc. Guy that came on 50 years old, Lada, was using a ton of insulin by the time he was six years in, they put him on a GLP for weight loss. He at the moment is, I mean, he's going to need insulin at some point again in his life, but at the moment, it wasn't using any as the time he recorded like and so if your C peptides going the other way, then that kind of feels like reminiscent of his story. If you have PCOS symptoms, that seems reminiscent of my daughter's story, and it just makes you wonder, like, what would happen if you added me?

Morgan 22:47 Like, would I go down? Like that young girl who barely uses any insulin and has been able to take off her pump?

Scott Benner 22:53 I mean, I wonder. It's worth asking your doctor about, although you're in Canada. So, I mean, yeah,

Morgan 22:59 that's my problem. Yeah, I could, I could try around now, there is a specific clinic run by diabetics out in a nearby town. Once the government will finally let me drive, maybe I can get myself appointments there. Why won't the government let you drive? So I had to do some blood work. I did do paperwork for them to sign off that I was type one diabetic when I was diagnosed, when they gave me a pamphlet about type two diabetes in the hospital, it said on there you should tell your licensing provider. So I did. That was the stupidest idea ever, because they told me I had to do paperwork and take it to the doctor, which I did, and then they give me blood work, which I do, and then they send that off to drive safe BC, and then they're supposed to sign it off. And then I go back in few months later to ask, like, Hey, is it done? I can't apply for my license. I can't do anything about my license. And they said, Oh, it's going to be a little bit. They're back ordered, and it's actually expired, so you have to do it again. And so I've done it twice now and still nothing. So

Scott Benner 23:55 you do it, they don't get to it in time it expires, because it hasn't been looked at. And then they tell you to do it again, and then it happens again. Yeah, so I can't get a license. It's so fat. I want you all to keep this in mind when you hear people say, like, oh, we should have, like, you know, state sponsor this and state sponsor that, because I know people who live in the Canada and yeah, and they have issues, and they go to a doctor and say, Hey, this is my problem. But if your problem is not going to kill you, you go to the bottom of the list. Yeah, right. And you're going to find that problem with that iron. Ask. You're going to say, Hey, I'd like to be seen for my iron. They're not going to see it for a year. Yeah, right. And then you're seeing it with the is it drive BC? Is that what they call it? Yeah,

Morgan 24:39 drive safe. BC, just governmental. There's no actual building. Or better, you have to call them

Scott Benner 24:46 only. So there's that. And then, yeah, so if you know a place you can go that is run by diet, like type ones or type twos or whatever, that you can go make this case and say, Look, I know that a GLP medication is not, you know. FDA approved, or whatever you guys call it up there, or PCOS. But here's some stories of people who've been helped by it. Also, here's some stories who have been helped by this. Also tell them my story, which is, I had low ferritin till I went on a GLP. And now my body, because my digestion has changed, I believe, is picking up my ferritin on its own. And I don't have a problem with Ferran anymore. I used to have to get I heard that the

Morgan 25:21 other day. I heard that the other day. I was wondering. I was like, Wait, what is it that stopped you from having to get infusions?

Scott Benner 25:25 I just think it's the you changed my digestion so my food, because I am, because your mom's right. Hey, you are eating enough. Oh yeah, yeah, but, but it's not staying in there long enough to get absorbed, for some reason. And that's my experience, right? I 100% tell you that I started taking a GLP medication, I lost just about 50 pounds, and my ferritin level shot up, and it stays up. Now

Morgan 25:50 that would be amazing, because, like, not feeling shaky would help tremendously, because I've got anxiety, and my anxiety symptoms feel like a low blood sugar, and so sometimes I'll feel low when I'm not actually low just based off of anxiety, and then I'll finger check to make sure gotten better at doing that first before just downing sugar. And so annoying. Well, let's

Scott Benner 26:11 What if a little farther. Okay, because again, not a doctor, not a vice don't know anything, but interviewed a lady recently. I don't know if it's up yet. Maybe it is. I'm sorry, there's so much. No, that's okay. A lot of her child's bipolar issues went away on a GLP medication. I ask out loud, if anxiety is inflammation related, what if the GLP reduces your inflammation and reduces your anxiety?

Morgan 26:39 I wonder. That would be amazing if you see

Scott Benner 26:41 that and the problem, okay, I don't know how much you weigh, and I don't know how things work in the canidia, but like in the Canadian possible that you're not going to like be able to be covered for this one way or the other. But more more importantly is the way they do the dosing for some people, and we found this for Arden, because Arden started taking GLP for PCOS stuff, and it immediately, like ban it pushed her insulin needs down 20% maybe it was awesome, right? And cleared up a lot of her PCOS issues. But Arden was also one of those people who already wasn't very hungry, and then she just was not hungry at all, yeah. And we tried just telling her, like, you got to eat through it. And she did, but struggled to do it enough, lost what we thought was too much weight, took her off of it for a month so she could put, put, like seven pounds back on, which she was able to do. We were on a FaceTime the other day, and she goes like this. She goes, Look. I was like, Okay. And so she got back to where she wanted to be, and but right away, as soon as the GLP was gone, like her insulin needs went wonky. And the biggest problem was, is that the spikes she was seeing at meals, you know, if you don't Pre Bolus, do all the things, like, suddenly they were back again. And she had gotten really used to being like, it did she get Bolus last minute? Like, all that stuff and everything. Like, super, like, cool. So we're left with just take this and shoot this stuff, because it comes in a pen right the lowest one she was using, she's using Manjaro is 2.5 milligrams, and she's like, as soon as I do this, I'm not gonna be able to eat again. And I was like, yeah, so we took a little bit of advice from other people who listened to the podcast and bought vials, like sterile vials, and then, instead of injecting the pen into Arden, we inject the pen into the vial and then draw out the medication with an insulin needle and give her less Ah, I see we're in the middle of figuring out what dose impacts her blood sugars and her other stuff without taking away her appetite. Appetite. And we're that makes sense. We're in like, week three of that experiment right now.

Morgan 28:57 Okay, so, yeah, it would be, it would probably be pretty hard to get them to give me a GLP, because I'm not, like, I'm on the lower end of the BMI scale, and so there's not really much. The PCOS might be my biggest thing, but then I would have to get myself diagnosed with it. I didn't go in the second time I had an ovarian disperser. I just

Scott Benner 29:14 knew what it was. You're just like, Oh, I know what this pain is. I'll live through this

Morgan 29:17 like I'm cold and sweaty and I feel like I'm dying. Oh, I had to run to the washroom first thing, that's first thing in the morning. I know what this is.

Scott Benner 29:24 We think that happened to Arden while she was at school last year. Yeah, it's not fun, yeah, because she's had one removed surgically as she Oh, yeah, that was not fun, either. And then the next time it I it just must have happened, because she's in the hospital with, like, terrible, you know, pain, and doesn't go away for a few days, and it lingers for a week right afterwards. Oh,

Morgan 29:47 yeah, it's, it's quite a kick it, yeah? Well, because it's, if it's ruptured, it's free flowing blood, so your intestines go, why are we internally bleeding? And it sends all those nerve signals. That's why it's so extreme. Shooting, they told me, yeah,

Scott Benner 30:01 that's something, and that's we don't really have a great way to treat any of this.

Morgan 30:06 No, unfortunately, not. But anyway, kind of kick in the butt. Yeah,

Scott Benner 30:09 I don't know what you're gonna do. Sounds like you're but I'll

Morgan 30:14 figure it out. I'm still alive. Yeah, I did want to ask you something about, I don't know if you've heard a lot of people talking about their beta hydroxy beauty rate number. What when they're in DKA. Tell me more. So I looked this number up because I was like, why is my number so high? Your normal range is supposed to be, like, 0.3 okay. And when I was in the hospital, because I'm curious about, like, How close was I had to really keeling over when I was diagnosed. Because it was a while before I got seen it was a 7.62 and jumped to 7.77 when I was in there at night, next morning, I was back down to 0.78

Scott Benner 30:53 and what is your question about it? Because nobody's really brings I mean, honestly, that one, I can't think of anybody bringing that up in their diagnosis source, if you look

Morgan 31:02 it up, beta hydroxy beauty rate. Could spell it if you want, but it'll probably auto correct you. I believe it shows you how much like toxicity may be, or how much in DKA you are. And so once you hit, like, three, you're in. DK, like, full blown, okay. And I was at 7.77 I'm like, was I just my body somehow, by this string of gums keeping a baby tooth in the mouth, like, alive, when I was going in there, and the doctors were all like, Oh no, no, you're okay. You're okay, you're

Scott Benner 31:38 okay, okay, you're still talking. You're fine, yeah? Like, I have a feeling I'm about to keel over. So you feel like, like, you just want to know how close you were to, like, shuffling off.

Morgan 31:51 Yeah, yeah. I had gotten COVID A month and a half before I was diagnosed. However, I had been needing to urinate more frequently for like months, like my ex boyfriend, the one that dumped me like, was it three months after diagnosis, lovely man, that one was, we've been together for three years, and he started noticing at the very end of it that I was needing to use the washroom a lot more frequently. Told me I should get that checked out. It was like four months after that that I finally did because I was, I was I thought I had a bladder infection. I went in, no, go to the ER, right now, you're diabetic, and so I'm like, oh, okay, okay, okay, my grandma, my lovely, lovely grandma. Love that woman. She took me there and she stayed with me. She's the only one who came and saw me in the hospital. Okay, couldn't tell my parents. So couldn't tell their parents because, well, first of all, they wouldn't have been able to come in because of the COVID vaccine thing. The COVID vaccine thing. And second of all, just their reaction of me being medically dependent, their first is to fix it.

Scott Benner 32:53 How close are your parents to wanting to pray this away? They're not

Morgan 32:57 praying it away. They're feeding me healthy foods away, they believed wholeheartedly they can fix it with

Scott Benner 33:05 apple cider vinegar, maybe, no a nut, a nut meal diet,

Morgan 33:11 and they looked into some researchers and such that apparently had cures out of diet. So, yeah,

Scott Benner 33:20 oh, your parents want to feed you ground up nuts to get rid of your type one diabetes. Yeah,

Morgan 33:25 yeah. So don't get much support there, unfortunately,

Scott Benner 33:29 oh no, no, no, no, no, we need to. We need to. We need to move Yeah, I already moved out. Thankfully, yeah, oh, I didn't realize. Okay, all right, yeah. Oh,

Morgan 33:39 my goodness, I think honestly, it was two months after I'd moved out. My body held off because it knew my parents would have had me just sleep and drink water tell it would go to comatose.

Scott Benner 33:47 Jeez. There's a couple of those stories, like, every couple of years that pop up of people who are like, it's usually for religious reasons. They don't treat it or something, definitely

Morgan 33:54 not religious. Yeah, very much. Like more so pagan.

Scott Benner 33:58 Oh, we'll let the mother take care of it. Am I making things up, or am I getting closer?

Morgan 34:04 No, you know you're you're like, more spot on. Now paganism, Mother Gaia, that is their belief. That's the kind of crunchy hippy dippy. Jeez. How many kids they got? Two me and my brother, who pisses them off because he's trans.

Scott Benner 34:18 Oh, Jesus, that must not be good for them. Oh, my goddess, no, oh, did you say oh my goddess?

Morgan 34:23 No, I was trying to say goodness, but I've got, like the worst, try to put two words into one. My mouth just stutters at all because

Scott Benner 34:30 I, like, called the episode, oh my oh my do not. Oh my god.

Unknown Speaker 34:36 No, fuck my head, oh my

Scott Benner 34:38 god, laughing. Okay, so I have here with a little Googling, et cetera. DKA levels can rise above 10 millimoles per deciliter, or even higher. At this point, the blood becomes highly acidic, which can lead to severe dehydration and electrolyte imbalance and ultimate organ failure or death, if not treated. So it sounds like maybe in the sevens. Were obviously high, but I don't know, not quite there, ready to pop? Yeah? Okay, good,

Morgan 35:05 good. Yeah, that was that, because I had only gone in for a urine test because I had called in for work. And then, of course, they're like, Oh, you need the doctor's note to be sick, big corporate. And so I went, and I called the 811, number, because I'm like, I'm not getting a doctor's appointment. It's five o'clock at night. And then they told me, yeah, I go into the walk in. So I did, and then I ended up in the ER from Monday till Friday. Jeez, when

Scott Benner 35:30 you get this diagnosis, I want to first understand they give you a Dexcom. Is that right? Yeah,

Morgan 35:35 oh my gosh. I love Kate, the CDE. That is the here, like, I'm in a senior town. So they have like, four type one diabetes they deal with. They kept me supplied with Dexcom for like, eight months before my MSRP, or whatever the thing is, kicked in so I could get my own fair PharmaCare, separate from my parents. Wait,

Scott Benner 35:52 isn't MSRP manufacturers suggested retail price. Oh,

Morgan 35:55 the MSP, okay, yeah. Leave the R alone. MSP, yeah, yeah, they you have to have your own number in order to have your own health coverage. And I'm still underage at 18 to be as I stole my dad's and he's a contract like a tile setter. He makes a heck of a lot of money, but it's all like cell phones, so he's got to pay his employee and his truck bills and all those things out of his income. So it looks on paper like he makes too much, and so they wouldn't cover it.

Scott Benner 36:26 So this lady just kept, like, saying

Morgan 36:28 just did tester boxes. She's handing them to me every time I would, because they saw me, like once every two weeks, and then it was once every month or so, and I was every two, well, three, then it was a three months, and then it's like six months now. Now it's at the think a year, because I keep forgetting to call them back. But I love them. They're super sweet. They don't have much information to give me. They just hear me talk, really and then, and even before I found the podcast, they just listened to me talk, and I had no idea what I was talking about. They're like

Scott Benner 36:53 a grandmother is like, I don't know. Usually I don't know what you're saying, but take a piece of candy. Yeah, my

Morgan 36:58 like, my a 1c, was at 6.2 because I was going up extremely high, and then down, and then up and then down. So I was fibbing out the a 1c test, and they're like, you're doing great. Like, I don't feel like I'm doing great. Tell

Scott Benner 37:08 me, how did you figure out how to manage yourself if they weren't helping you? Well,

Morgan 37:11 at first, like, I left the hospital, I didn't even know that I should be under 10. Like, I mean, they gave me a pamphlet, but it was geared towards type two diabetes, okay, and so, I mean, they made sure that I knew how to inject myself, and they kind of, I mean, they probably threw the information a little bit like, your your range is four to 10, but they didn't put any kind of emphasis on keeping yourself there, like, you know about the complications, but they didn't explain that, like, the high blood sugar is what's going to cause the complications, not the fact that you have the disease itself. And so I left. And for a few months, there had no idea what's going on. I dropped in because I had a honeymoon phase on lot of but, like, I had a more so honeymoon phase where I completely dropped down to, like, using two units of basal, okay? And, like, I didn't need to use Bolus insulin for my meals. And so that was, like, only a year of it. It like, like, a staircase went down. I would drop two units of basal, like, every few days, and then it kind of hovered a bit on the lower end, and then it started climbing back up towards the end of the year, where every few weeks I would kind of need to go bit more till I kind of settled at the 10. But they didn't, yeah, when I was coming out of the hospital, they just made sure I knew how to take the insulin. I had my type two pamphlet, and they made sure I had my supplies. So they gave me insulin, and they gave me dexcoms enough to supply. Then if I needed them, I could call them and say, like, Hey, I'm out, and they'd give me some more. I tried, like, calculated it, it's probably like, 1000s of dollars that they just were helping. Handed me, yeah, without me. It was just really sweet. They gave me half those

Scott Benner 38:39 pens. They understood your situation. They were trying to be helpful. Yeah, exactly, yeah. They gave

Morgan 38:44 me a half dose pens and told me to get the cartridges when my insulin needs dropped really, really low, so that I would be able to just give myself like happiness for food. That's

Scott Benner 38:54 wonderful. That's lovely, actually, especially in the situation you're in at your age and with their lack of like, like family backup for yourself.

Morgan 39:04 Yeah, and nobody is there to watch. Nobody's gonna see my which is kind of sad to me, because my mom was a midwife, and so she is, like, hard green to wake up to a pager. So if there could have been anybody to help me, sorry, figure out how to take care of myself

Scott Benner 39:21 at night. Now you're crying. What the hell yeah, Jesus, she would

Morgan 39:26 wake up to a low alarm at night or I don't. I'm so sorry. You're fine to run myself higher than I'd like. It's

Unknown Speaker 39:33 because you don't feel like

Scott Benner 39:35 you have anybody to back you up. I have nobody that would wake up. What about excavator boy?

Morgan 39:39 He won't. He sits right there. You think he can hear. He's deaf. Come on, the excavators, ruins, is your hearing? I'm

Scott Benner 39:45 so sorry. Not only did your family not look like a valuable resource to you, but you were dating someone who, at the time, who broke up with you because you got diabetes.

Morgan 39:53 Not only you know how being a high blood sugar changes who you are as a person, and he created a different. Image in his head about who I was, personality wise, rather than realizing that I was going through some other stuff. You know, been together for three years, so some crap had happened, and couldn't get over it. Just, yeah, he just blocked me on everything. Said, I think we should break up, hung up the phone and didn't say a word. I had to actually go to his friend to give him get a reason.

Speaker 1 40:19 Yeah, how long? Three years, yeah, three

Morgan 40:23 years during high school. Was my high school sweetheart, people, I lost my virginity that, oh my

Scott Benner 40:27 gosh, oh yeah. He could have said goodbye nicely,

Morgan 40:31 oh yeah, no, I think we should break up. Yeah. I mean, even if it was

Scott Benner 40:35 like, inarticulate, and he was like, I appreciate you giving me your virginity, and I have to go, yeah,

Morgan 40:39 like baseline, I'm like, you, you were a good lay for a bit. Like something to hate him even would have been nice, but, yeah, just

Scott Benner 40:47 the direct cut off is the worst part. Radio silence. Yeah, it is terrible. I have to admit. You know, I realize it's very common, but like texting a person to break up with them is such a new idea that I can't wrap my head around, yeah,

Morgan 41:03 it was supposed to see him that day, and so I was, I was on the phone with him, and then, yeah, it was, it was just over the phone. I'm like, you couldn't even do it in person.

Scott Benner 41:13 Sucks. I'm sorry.

Morgan 41:16 It's been few years now. I had another diplox After that, and then I got my little my excavator, bueno, oh, excavator boy, he's not a

Scott Benner 41:26 little glad you found somebody better, and that's a valuable part of your life. But I wanted to give you a second to get away from your sadness about your mom. But I appreciate it. But at the same point, I mean, we don't talk about this stuff very often, because people don't bring it up, but you feel abandoned, I imagine a little bit, yeah, yeah, and you got your grandmom, but that's really it. As far as family goes,

Morgan 41:51 I love her so much. She calls it diabetes. She tries her best to understand. And she's, she's probably the more of the knowledgeable ones in my family, for sure, but yeah, it's

Scott Benner 42:02 odd. Yeah, you really feel like you feel like you're on your own, and at a young age too,

Morgan 42:06 yeah, too old. I was diagnosed at 18, so I just graduated two months prior. I was getting my first job. I'd been at that job for like, a month and a half or so. Yeah, the

Scott Benner 42:17 thing that your parents represent here the like, we don't need medicine, that kind of thing, like growing up for the first number of years. Was it a problem? Was it almost like mom and dad or like, hippie dippie? It's fine. But then where was a

Morgan 42:30 midwife? There's a reason she hates the medical system. She delivered 500 babies in her career, if not more, and the amount of toxicity and corruption within the hierarchy and within I'm you've heard from all the whistle blowers? Yeah, they lost faith in the medical system, and so, because they've never had to deal with like type one diabetes, they didn't really intake it the same way. Severity wise. Do

Scott Benner 42:59 you think they don't understand that without the insulin you're they understand

Morgan 43:03 that. They know that like because there was one of the first things my dad, when he was upset, I told him, I said, I would have died had I not gone in. I would I wouldn't be talking to you right now. And that kind of shook them into reality, but they still feel like they can fix me.

Scott Benner 43:16 Is there really people in line who think that ground nuts can Is that true? I think, I'm

Morgan 43:20 not 100% sure, but it was a book or something that they had read by a physician who I'm gonna look please do. I'm curious. I was like a mixed diet, but nuts were a primary aspect of it. I don't

Scott Benner 43:36 know how to figure this out. Like, what do I google? Like cure type one.

Morgan 43:41 I don't even know, because, yeah, you'll get everything, including the one guy that told me a hyperbaric chamber would work. But, you know, yeah, I have to do it for a month, and it costs $6,700 Oh, yeah. I'm like, yeah, no, thanks.

Scott Benner 43:54 I can't find the myth that ground nuts cure anything, but Jesus also the hyperbolic there. That's like, that's a cult thing. Like, Hey, you want, you want the protection of us, you just have to your daughter needs to sleep with the guy, and it'll all be fine. You know what? I mean, we'll let you right in, like, for only $6,700 we'll put you in a hyperbolic chamber. Make this whole thing go away. Yeah, cure it all Wow. Where did you meet a person who told you that

Morgan 44:20 at work he was one of my customers because I saw my insulin pump, and

Scott Benner 44:25 he's like, Hey, if you have $6,700 I can save you pretty much. Yeah, how many? By the way,

Morgan 44:31 I've gotten a couple of the religious nuts too that come on, like I want one. I just kind of scared me the intensity in his eyes. He goes, I will pray for you. So he starts praying, and just to go out in front of me and like holds my hand and I'm just sitting there, and the intensity in his eyes, I did not want to be subjected to this. But thank you.

Scott Benner 44:49 Appreciate your help.

Unknown Speaker 44:51 Here's your receipt.

Morgan 44:55 Well, to be fair, though, this Job did bring me you. I had a wonderful cost. I work in the auto parts department. I was selling this guy a battery, and he I don't know if you noticed my Dexcom or my bracelet, but he said, My girlfriend has type one. She's in the car. Do you want me to go get her? I'm like, sure,

Scott Benner 45:12 sure. Yeah, go fill her up. Let's see what's going on.

Morgan 45:16 So she comes down, she comes back in, and I'm like, Oh, no way. We had a little conversation, and she gave me sugar surfing and your podcast, and I written it on my arm, and it was maybe a day or two later. I had seen the writing on my arm was nearly faded, and I'm like, oh, I should write this down before it fades away fully. And so I started listening to your episode, and I don't remember which one was the first one, I found it really stuck to me. One of the first ones that I listened to was the one where you're explaining how you talked a lady through feeding her son food when he was high, but giving him the extra meal for the correction as well as the meal and catching it, yeah, at the right time. And I nearly cried because I was like, no, no one had explained to me that I could do this, or things like this, and just the fact that I'd found so much information at the time, it was like 1000 episodes, I think, yeah,

Speaker 1 46:10 sorry about that. Okay. I was like,

Morgan 46:13 there's so much information. I finally feel like I have a direction ago, because beforehand, I really didn't understand much, like I said, like, they didn't explain that it was the high blood sugars that caused all the complications, not just the fact that you had diabetes itself. And it didn't really give me methods. I went to my doctor when I was first few months in, and I said, Hey, what do I do? And he goes, Well, trial and error. I don't really have a resin for you. You're gonna have to figure it out. I'm like, Oh, well, I feel even more alone.

Scott Benner 46:43 Is it okay if I listen to a guy with a podcast? Is that fine? I've

Morgan 46:48 brought that up to them now. Since then, I'm like, I listened to a podcast. He's been phenomenal. Deal with

Scott Benner 46:54 it. You're very nice. I just had a kid like, you know what I mean? Then I we were like, that went, well, let's make another one. And, like, and it came out. And we were like, two, we have two kids, and then a couple years later, we're like, how come this one? Seems like it's dying. Oh, gosh. Then we went to a hospital, and they were like, you know, it's it your daughter has type one diabetes. And we were just, wherever one of you has been, like, I know what we were doing, rudimentary direction, sometimes no direction at all. And, you know, the the first time, the first months were terrible, Arden had a seizure in the first handful of months, I was just following what the doctor said to do. Then you start thinking, God, this is it? Like, she's two, you know, like she's gonna have seizures. Like, you know, like, we can't eat lunch, you know, like, everything is scary, and you're not sleeping all of a sudden because you're like, constantly, like, like, this insulin is gonna, like, either save her or kill her. Yeah, every time like, and, you know, like, and that's the life. And then it got desperate, and I thought, like, like, I'll write a blog about it. You know, back right, right at the beginning when blogs were like, even a thing. And then I just was like, well, like, I'll beg people to, like, donate to things. Basically, like, I'll, if I can explain to them what this really is, like, maybe they'll put a donation into this thing, and maybe somebody smarter than me will, like, figure out something is kind of how it happened. Then that's where community starts, right? Like, looking back on it, I always kind of missed that piece of it, but, like, I met other bloggers, yeah, right. And then they tell stories about things, like, there's this lovely woman, though I haven't seen in a decade, probably named Lorraine. And like, she's the reason I know about a Pedra, for example, right? I was like, writing a blog about how, like, art and blood sugar was, like, bouncing all over the place. And she said, have you tried a Pedra? And I was like, I don't know what that is. I'm like, I have insulin, I have Novolog here. And she goes, Nova logs, not insulin. It's a kind of insulin. I was like, oh, okay, there's like, more like, because in my mind, I was in the hospital and someone reached out with a violin, this is insulin. I was like, All right, this is insulin. This is insulin. Yeah, I'll remember that, you know, yeah. And, you know, I remember the first time that somebody mentioned, uh, CGM was in a doctor's office. And, you know, I've probably told that story a bunch of times, but, you know, my daughter's nurse practitioner tells me a story about, like, there's these things now you wear them, and you can see your your blood sugars in, like, almost real time. And, and I have this patient, and she starts telling me about this kid who's probably like 17 in the story, if I remember right? And he got one who was super excited because he couldn't eat Eminem's without his blood sugar going up. And he thought he could figure it out. And then she just told me, like he did it a bunch of days in a row. He put them the insulin, ate the M M's, like normal. Watch what happened the next day. He changed the amount of time before he. He put in, you know, he put in the insulin. And he did this a few days in a row. He had a bunch of M M's, and one day, figured out the timing and the amount that kept the M M's from causing him a problem, either either a spike high or a low later. And I just thought, like, I bet I could do that with everything. Yeah,

Morgan 50:18 yeah. That's why, whenever people, I see them, and they still say, like, Hey, you shouldn't eat that, because that's just you want. You don't want that high blood sugar. You shouldn't eat that. Like, but it's possible it's all timing and amount. Scott's done it, you can do it and

Scott Benner 50:31 see, and then so, like, you know, I go along and I make these, like, you start figuring things out. And then, like I said, like, people would come on the show, and like, even you brought up sugar surfing, like, Dr ponder came on the podcast, like, very early on, yeah, and I remember when I was talking to him, I might have said it out loud. I haven't listened to it in a really long time, but I remember thinking, at the very least, well, this guy calls this thing something, but I have a system, too. I didn't realize I had a system. Like, I knew there were these things. Like, if I do these things, generally speaking, it works out for me, and then eventually I made those into the Pro Tip series. Yeah.

Morgan 51:04 Oh, those are amazing. There's so many people are so thankful that you created that series. Oh,

Scott Benner 51:09 I'm so glad. And so you're just like, okay, like, well, that worked. And then you talk about it, and then more people than the podcast gets super popular, and then people come on and they tell their stories, and then, like we did a half an hour ago, I'm like, Well, I don't know if this is right or wrong, but this lady told me this thing, and I just feel like Lorraine saying, like, hey, you know, have you tried a Pedra? Like? So I'm like, I don't know if a GLP is going to help you or not, but here's something somebody else told me. I don't even know if it's worth giving it a shot, but at least you know about it, and then you can decide for yourself, right? I've

Morgan 51:42 been thinking about it for a bit, and that was one of the things I actually wanted to ask you, is, like, even though I have issues with appetite, is it still would? It may be because I have most like, I'll have sensitivity points where I'm on extremely low. Like, that's when it's on nine units a day total. And then some of the days that are really extreme around, like, my luteal phase, I'll go up to like, 2025, units an hour, and I'm still high and can't bring it down. Yeah, and just the amount of jumping it does with my menstrual cycle and the hormone changes, and with it being so irregular with everything, it's a nightmare to figure out when something's going to be too much, or if I need to up it by like, four times the amount. Like,

Scott Benner 52:19 maybe you don't even need the new kind of more modern injectables. There's pills glps that have been out for years. Like, like, who knows? Like, maybe you should try Metformin, I don't know. But, like, you shouldn't just sit around being in pain all the time. And, yeah, you know, having horrible like, you know, having your horrible period poops and running to the potty and all that, that's not fun. They're

Morgan 52:40 a nightmare. No, nobody likes those. Nobody likes period poops.

Scott Benner 52:45 There's a kid's book. You're never gonna say

Morgan 52:47 definitely not. Mom went to the bathroom again. We don't talk about it.

Scott Benner 52:52 Don't talk about what happened. I got my period, and now all I know is I'm not sure what's gonna happen when I get to the potty. Listen, I love women, and there are women in my house, in my life, and I watch it with them constantly. Yeah, so it's very unfair. I'll tell you that much. Yeah. I'm

Morgan 53:08 sure it's a it gets to be quite a handful when you have the girls think too. I love the Bluetooth uteruses. I'm just

Scott Benner 53:13 gonna tell you right now, boys don't have problems like that, so I Yeah, yeah, it's just, like, whatever. But no, you just, you feel bad when you see it happening, or, you know, like, you know, my wife's, like, wakes up in the morning. I'm like, I thought you were going in the office. She was i Coming to work from home today. Okay? I hope you're okay again. Just

Morgan 53:31 push the chocolate slowly towards her. He's offering,

Scott Benner 53:36 here you go. Feel better. Don't bite me. I'll be

Morgan 53:38 in the other room, please. Yeah, my new kitten keeps biting me everywhere you

Scott Benner 53:42 have a kit. What is the name? Milo? Not Scott? Okay, no,

Morgan 53:46 I know. I'm sorry. I is an orange kitten, and I watched Milo notice a lot when I was younger. So I'm a Milo,

Scott Benner 53:52 makes sense? Well, I'm, again, just very happy that any of this helped you, or has helped anybody. I think that's awesome. Absolutely,

Morgan 53:59 you have done so much for the community. I know you don't like to take in the compliments very often, but you've saved lives legitimately, and you've saved complications in future, so many I hope

Scott Benner 54:13 so. I'm going to take it today because I can use it today. So thank you. Well, there

Morgan 54:17 you go. Yeah, I wanted to ask if anybody had ever mentioned to you the fact that, like, okay, because we are diabetic, we have to pee more often, right? Because the liver is trying to filter out the high blood sugar. If so, if you're high blood sugar, you got to pee more often. I have noticed that if I'm fighting with a high blood sugar now, this might just be because I'm on lower sensitivity. If I have to go to the washroom, and I don't go pee, and I'm fighting with this high blood sugar, I'm just pushing insulin in every like 4550 minutes because I'm on FIAs, so it's much quicker acting. So I don't have to worry about stacking as much, right? If I don't pee, it'll stay higher. As soon as I go to the washroom, it starts going down. As soon as I go to the washroom, it's and. It's so annoying, because if I'm sitting somewhere where I can't use the washroom and I'm watching the number climb, I know I'm not going to be able to bring it down as quickly as if I'm able to go and use washer.

Scott Benner 55:09 So is the question in a type one, does the extra glucose in the urine during high blood sugars impact the glucose in the blood stream. Is that the is that the question, I

Morgan 55:32 guess, because I wonder, like, if maybe there's, think of it like an extra fuel tank. Once you've drained the fuel tank, then there's more room for the liver to push extra blood in there so you're able to dilute it out of the bloodstream quicker. Okay, maybe,

Scott Benner 55:46 well, I mean, you know, there's definitely things like, I've seen high blood sugars with constipation, and then when the poopy happens, the blood sugar starts to drop. Okay, that I've seen, and I interesting, again, I didn't go to college, yeah, but the way it always occurred to me was that there's some matter inside of you. It must me, it's got to be impacting, like, glucose. I don't, I don't know. I could be 100% like, trust me, I could be wrong, but what I can say for sure is that I have seen constipation, high blood sugars. Go to the bathroom. Blood sugars begin to fall almost immediately.

Morgan 56:21 Okay, yeah, because I see that with urination, and I feel like maybe there's something else going on in, like my uterus, bladder area, to maybe something to do with the bicarbonate uterus, but I feel like I always have to use, like, I always have to pee, even if my blood sugar is within range. Like, it lessens thankfully. Like, if I'm able to have a good day, I have noticed I do, I'm able to hold it in for a lot longer. But like, as soon as my blood sugars go to Arrange, I'm peeing every 30 minutes. So obviously, a

Scott Benner 56:50 person with diabetes gets spillage into their urine, right? Because you're like, you said, your kidneys are like, let's try to get rid of this glucose somehow. But does that glucose inside of the urine impact like your actual blood sugar, I don't, yeah, I don't know. And I don't, probably not, like it's not connected to your bloodstream. So I

Morgan 57:09 wonder if it's like an adrenaline thing, maybe even, I don't know, all I can adrenaline of holding in it in and then it keeps it going up. And then maybe I

Scott Benner 57:17 look back on my early life with my my buddy, Mike, who's passed on and had type one. I've heard you mention him, yeah, and he, you know, I obviously, with hindsight, had high blood sugars a lot. And one of my, like enduring memories of Mike, is that if we went to a washroom together in public, there was part of you, oddly enough, you mentioned your father being a tile cutter. There was part of you that thought he was gonna piss right through the urinal, right through the wall and outside. Oh, the force. Yeah, yeah, from the force.

Morgan 57:50 Oh, oh, my goodness, yeah.

Scott Benner 57:52 Oh, are we gonna call this episode tile cutter? Maybe, oh, maybe Canadian tile cutter. Maybe we'll think about it. But yeah, like, I, and I look back now and I think, you know, he ended up on dialysis, yeah, and I, and I always thought, like, I've thought in hindsight, like, geez, like that high, all that urine, that high pressure peeing all the time back then, we didn't, I didn't understand what that meant. And he certainly didn't. He just thought he was a guy who peed hard, you know what? I mean? Yeah, yeah. No internet, nobody to ask, etc. And it blew his kid, I mean, his kidneys blew out. He was on dialysis for years before he passed away. Yeah, maybe

Morgan 58:31 that's what happened to my grandpa, because he had type two diabetes, and I know he pissed like a race horse. You could hear him from the other room. Yeah, maybe that was a I'm not laughing at your

Scott Benner 58:40 grandfather peeing hard for grandfather paying hard. I'm laughing at a meme I saw recently that said, why can I hear my boyfriend peeing from every room in the house? And I thought, oh, god, does that happen to every girl? It's like a megaphone. But the real thought here is like, you know, stability, lower your variability, keep your keep, you know, keep your blood sugar as in range as possible. Take that pressure off your kidneys,

Morgan 59:08 yeah, my biggest thing that I'm proud of being able to do, at least, is I don't tend to sit anywhere above 15 for lengths of time, like I don't have it refined too, too much. Because, well, first few years here, I was kind of flying blind, and then I found the podcast, and I've been finding so much helpful information. I've already been noticing a flatter line and able to handle foods more more nicely. My high on like my Dexcom reading, for the clarity, the high, high number is 15, and I'm like, 1% above that at all times. Okay, much that's awesome. Yeah, I do not like sitting and seeing an 18 at all. I will smash as much in slim as I can on there.

Scott Benner 59:47 You've spent time figuring out how to help yourself. You're doing well with that. You've, you know, emancipated yourself to some degree, and you're living on your own. We were with your grandmother, right? With my boyfriend, with your boyfriend, okay, yeah. Yeah, how have you thought about how to structure the next decade of your life, for example, so that you can take care of your health and, you know, be happy and build a life at the same time? Yeah?

Morgan 1:00:11 Well, I'm definitely I can't wait for, like, on pod five to hit Canada. We're still waiting for that. Then I can have an algorithm. Maybe I'll get some better sleep. I kind of wanted to be a CDE, but I feel like I have a lot of interest in diabetes. Of course, I know I do a lot of personal research and those kind of things, but if I made it my job, my career, I feel like I would maybe even lose interest in taking care of myself. So I don't want to risk it. So I've always wanted to be a vet, but there's a lot of issues in the vet area, so I'm haven't really figured out what I want to do yet, but I do want to take, like, a biology course in university to try to get back into school, because, well, I was going to take a gap year, but then got diagnosed and I didn't feel safe enough to move, like out city wise, farther away from little bit of help I had in the main town, right? So I have plans to either trades, because I am in auto parts, and I have a high interest in an auto body and, well, I do live in one of the very popular muscle car areas of Canada, and so there's people here that love their gassers, and they're not going to change that. So there always be work and with diabetes wise, I'm really hoping that just over time, I'm learning kind of what's going on. I hope the GLP might be something I could try. However, I do feel like I'll start to see less and less sensitivity slowly. Is like the lot of kind of settles into normal type one. I guess I'm not really planning on having kids in the near, near future, so I don't have to deal with that extra stuff as well. So mostly just figuring out what works for me, and I can't do the whole like, low carb diet, I have hard enough time eating anyways, I've got, I mean, I've seen it around, and I'm not diagnosed, so I don't really want to say it, but like, kind of an arfid style, where it's like food avoidant. If I'm not hungry, I won't eat. And if it doesn't seem like it tastes like I won't be able to physically chew it, like I'll gag and feel nauseous. If it's something that doesn't taste good, or I'm not craving has this been

Scott Benner 1:02:22 prior to diabetes, or since

Morgan 1:02:24 not prior to diabetes? You've had this

Scott Benner 1:02:27 forever? Yeah, I actually

Morgan 1:02:29 lost. The reason I didn't really notice much on the losing weight when I was diagnosed is because a year previous, during COVID, I had lost like 20 pounds from just drinking tea. I might I joked. I said I was keeping my blood sugar steady and from going low by drinking

Scott Benner 1:02:48 throughout the day. That's what you thought was happening. Like, obviously, I'm handling this whole thing with tea. Yeah, it works. You all should try it. I'm gonna start. I'm like,

Morgan 1:02:59 I wasn't eating much, so I'm like, at least I'll drink the tea so that, you know, because this was, like, way before a diagnosis, like, so I don't get shaky and stuff and feel and feel, and I won't have any low blood sugar, and I'm still eating something and the tea with a bunch of sugar, like, a quarter cup of sugar. Oh, I was like, sugar. Whore. When it comes to my tea beforehand, I

Scott Benner 1:03:20 wonder if your low ferritin has any impact

Morgan 1:03:26 on I also think I have low sodium because I'm constantly craving salt, and every time I've had my tests done, the sodium number is like, right on the lower end. Do you chew ice? No, no,

Scott Benner 1:03:39 it's never been that low where you're like, chewing ice. Okay, no, I just wonder if, like, Can low Fert and impact desire to eat. I wonder as well, maybe, maybe it does. What's the word? How come I can't think of the word in appetite? Thank you, Jesus. Of course, I'm talking about so many things, thinking about so many things that I'm sitting here

Morgan 1:04:01 saying, because my brain functions really quickly. I like that episode you had with that lady the other day, or I listened to it the other day, where she her brain works really quickly, so everybody talking seems slow to her, and so she has to, like, slow herself down and try not and so I just related a bit to that. I'm always speaking too quickly for people to hear me.

Scott Benner 1:04:20 I have a little bit of feedback here. Don't know if it's right, but low ferritin levels can impact appetite. Iron is an essential mineral that plays a vital role in many bodily functions, including oxygen transport, energy production and maintaining normal metabolism. When ferritin levels are low, due to iron deficiency, several factors can contribute to changes in appetite, reduced energy, levels of fatigue, altered taste and smell, hormonal imbalances

Morgan 1:04:47 and sounds like every one of those marks is accurate, gastrointestinal

Scott Benner 1:04:51 symptoms, emotional impact, like feeling fatigued or dizzy, etc, yeah, so you're looking for unintentional weight. Loss, lack of motivation to cook or prepare meals. Difficult swallowing or discomfort when eating. I feel a bit called out now. Decreased interest in food or eating smaller portions than usual. I feel

Morgan 1:05:11 really called out. Chaka Khan,

Scott Benner 1:05:13 we've done it. Not a medical not a doctor. Almost couldn't get through high school, fell asleep, missed 53 days of my senior year of high school. Just want to say, look at you now. All right. Well, this is it. Let's get your iron up, okay, and either do it. The problem is, I know somebody that this happened to, yeah, in the great white north up there. Oh yeah. And they went to the doctor and they gave them a an appointment, like, a year out. Oh, yeah, yeah. So maybe we got to get you to that clinic and tell them all this, and say, Look, I just want you to jack up my ferritin to see if I feel better. Yeah, that, yeah. And then once it's up, we'll test it again when you watch it fall and see that I'm eating well and it's not keeping my fire tune up, then maybe you'll give me the GLP to try to help with that, and help me dose it in a way that can keep up my appetite, but have some sort of an impact on this PCOS stuff. And Bob's your uncle, we're all done.

Morgan 1:06:18 Yeah, no, that would be awesome. I definitely have to get to that clinic out there in Rena.

Scott Benner 1:06:22 How often do I get to say, Bob's your uncle, and nobody says, What are you talking about? Not that often you knew what I meant. I know it's like common phrase up here. I know it is because I make a podcast so I learn all kinds of useless

Morgan 1:06:35 I should have known.

Scott Benner 1:06:37 Yeah, that's how I learned that, from y'all, from us all. Yeah, you stabbers. I was a staff that's something we talked about before we started recording. So it's completely out of context now, but, oh yeah, I suppose so isn't it? Also that was the most Canadian thing you've done since we've been Oh yeah, you're supposed so Hey,

Unknown Speaker 1:06:57 really cool that. Now,

Scott Benner 1:06:59 do you know who Bob and Doug McKenzie are? Yes,

Morgan 1:07:02 I do. They play as the moose and Brother Bear.

Scott Benner 1:07:06 How? Oh, that's how you know who they are.

Morgan 1:07:07 Well, I'm, I am a tooth early, 2000s baby. That's awesome. I

Scott Benner 1:07:12 you know, I brought it up to a Canadian once they've never seen the movie strange brew. I'm disappointed. I was too, so disappointed. I was like, what kind of a Canadian Are

Morgan 1:07:21 you? Right? My uncle, before he passed, like, that was one of his favorite like, you sit down, just watch him for hours. No fun. I love those guys. Yeah, that's so

Scott Benner 1:07:29 cool. All right, what have we not talked about that we should have also you and I should probably have our own podcast together.

Morgan 1:07:33 Oh, I would love that. Yeah. Oh, my God, I would, and I would love to come on again in the future, as I've figured out more and more things if possible. Because, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:07:42 talking to you, Well, that's very possible. I really enjoyed this, but talking to you is the way I imagine talking to Arden on the podcast is going to be but it never is. She's like, I'll do it fine. Let's go, oh, Arden and I have been recording. I don't understand episodes which

Morgan 1:08:00 you have. Oh, nice, because I heard the other ones with Jenny that you just recently published. I love them. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:08:06 good. Jenny's and mine are just, like, diabetes related stuff where we're like, I don't understand why this is, like, this Ardens and mine have nothing to do with diabetes. Because I said, Can we, like, throw in some diabetes stuff? And she's like, not, if you want to talk to me. I'm like, Okay, so we've been doing, like, we have this long list of things. So where this idea came from was that Arden would say stuff to us, like, I don't understand how money works. We'd be like, what? And so one day, I'm like, start writing these down. And she's like, what? I'm like, I'm like, start a note, some content here. Like, start a note in your phone. Every time you think you don't understand something, just go into that note and be like, I don't understand how Wi Fi works, which, by the way, is

Morgan 1:08:44 on her list. Is it okay? You'll figure out what my parents are so scared about.

Scott Benner 1:08:48 Yeah, yeah. We'll figure it out. And so you said about a minute ago. And so, like, knew this would happen. We built this. It's really coming out as you get more comfortable. It's fantastic. We built this long ass list of things. It's an embarrassing list. She's like, I should not tell people I don't understand these things. And I'm like, No, it's gonna be fun. So like, we jumped on the other day for the first time to do it remotely, because she's at college, so I sent her off to college with a microphone. And I'm like, I'm like, we're gonna record every Tuesday at 3pm and so we jumped on and she's like, Dad, I'm exhausted. My period's late. I don't want to do this. And I'm like, and then she just like, the time came up, and I'm sitting on the link. She's not there. And I text her, I go, Hey, and she goes, Hey, what's up? And I'm like, we're supposed to be recording now. And she goes, Oh, hold on. How do I get on this link? I'm like, You're kidding me. I'm like, it's in your email. Click on it. She goes, I'm not 150 I don't look at my email. Oh my goodness. I'm like, okay, so she jumps on. I get her set up with the microphone and everything, and then we start, like, bickering and talking and everything and just like that. And I'm like, All right, like, what are we gonna do? All. Off this list, and I started reading stuff off the list. She's like, that, I don't know, I'm so tired. And then she's like, my period won't come. And like, I'm just, I just want my period to come. And I'm like, right? And she goes, I got homework to do. And I'm like, just pick something off this goddamn list. And they're all like, gems. And I'm like, spinning them out. And she's like, I don't know. And then we just pivoted and I was like, You know what I don't understand? And she goes, what, I'm like, the idea of being judgmental, like, it's like, it's so, like, I don't think of it the way I think other people think of it. And so we started talking about that. She called me out on some things. And so we went over judgmental, because between you and I, I don't think that me assessing what's happening around me and slotting those assessments against what I've seen historically constitutes me being judgmental. I think I'm just witnessing things, observing and observing and putting the spot. And I made the point to her that I don't think it becomes judgmental until you inflict it upon the person who you're noticing. And she goes, dude, you're so judgmental. Stop it. And I'm like, I really don't think I am. I'm like, I'm not cruel to people I would never, like, witness something and then go up to them and go like, Oh my god, Alice, yeah, yes. So anyway, that's what we talked about. Yeah, it's an episode that will 1,000,000% make me look like an asshole for being so honest, but like, I'm gonna love to hear great. I think people feel like that, like, we all notice, but it's not till you run up to somebody and you're like, Yo, did you know you're this or that? Like, yeah, then it's judgmental, right? Yeah, but

Morgan 1:11:34 then start putting malice into, yeah, negative connotations too. Anyway,

Scott Benner 1:11:39 that'll all be coming up on the podcast at some point, and I think you and I should do a couple of those together. Is what I'm saying. Oh, definitely, definitely. I think that's where the podcast is going to go. Eventually. It's just going to be people coming on, going, you know, I don't understand this. And then we just start talking,

Morgan 1:11:55 start delving into it. Well, hey, it's very informative, and it just keeps building upon you can't like you said before. In other episodes, you can't say the same things over and over again. And expect people, new people, to come in and want to listen. You got to keep it interesting. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:12:09 love it when people are like, you know, you don't talk about diabetes much. Your Diabetes podcast? I was like, yeah, there are diabetes podcasts that do that. No one listens to

Morgan 1:12:16 them. Yeah, exactly. It's too it's too hyper focused. You have to bring in the other stuff to Yeah, balance out like I went snowmobiling on the mountain, and I figured out for the first time that altitude is not accurate to the Dexcom readings. In fact, I think my snow pants had actually pulled off the Dexcom I was stuck on. Because we have these beautiful, my future father in law there, he's got these beautiful, like, 2018 Polaris RMK, 800 mountain snowmobiles. And so they will go up a wall, if you put them there. I got stuck, of course, and I was fighting to get it out. And I could feel my blood sugar was going down, but I looked at my Dexcom said 10. I could just I could feel it. I could feel that I was going low. And so I tested. And by the time, because I should have tested instantly, but I hopped back on the snowmobile and rode another two minutes just at the very top of the mountain, where it was windier and colder, and then tested and found I was at 3.3 and I had given myself insulin to try to correct that 10 that I'd seen earlier. So I was coming down.

Scott Benner 1:13:12 First of all, your blood sugar was obviously falling. But I've had conversations with people where they say, I swear to God, altitude really impacts my blood sugar.

Morgan 1:13:21 It sure does. That's where I noticed it, for sure, because it like I just started going down, and then, because of how cold it was, my one touch meter wasn't freaking and so I'm sitting there, I've got five different people huddled around me. They're handing me full sugar, sodas, chocolate bars, this, this and that, this is like the family. So it's my boyfriend was there, my boyfriend's brother, his dad and their landlord, which is essentially an adoptive grandfather for everybody, and they were all huddled around me, trying to keep me warm, and trying to get my meter warm enough so that I could test my blood sugar again. Charles gave me his gloves, and it was just super sweet, because, like I I have a little bit of support here and there, as much as they might not understand. They knew then I needed sugar, and Mike knows I've got my backseat me in my bag, so anything were to happen, he would be able to apply it. Though, I don't think he's at all interested in ever doing that. No one do

Scott Benner 1:14:14 it if need be, not until you get not till you get into the fight. And you're like, All right, yeah, exactly. You're like, Oh no, I gotta do it. I guess we're gonna do it. What you said earlier, it's just, really, it's accurate. Like, if you, if you sat down, you're like, I'm gonna make a podcast episode today. It's gonna be about altitude and how it impacts blood sugar, and then I'm gonna make the title, altitude impacts type one diabetes. You know, no one, no one is gonna be like, Oh, I can't wait to flip that on and find out more. Yeah, you know, like you got to have a conversation with somebody, get the number, let them take this. Yeah, it comes up.

Morgan 1:14:46 I think that's what works so well with your podcast, and why you've become so successful is because you're not trying to force it upon anybody. You just leave it there so that people can come and find it, and curious cats will come and find it. Really

Scott Benner 1:14:57 is my goal. Yeah, just. Let people talk, and I'll babble on about things I've noticed, and you'll either find something in it that's valuable for you, or you won't. But there's no pressure, right? Like, the podcast doesn't cost you anything Exactly. There's no timeline. No one's forcing you to listen to it. There's no timeline. You don't have to do anything. Like, it's got ads, but you don't click on the links for the ads. Like, whatever I try to say in the ads, like, look, I appreciate all of you are trying to support the podcast. Like, like, don't buy this stuff if you don't really want it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just, it's here. These people pay to put ads in the podcast. Click on them if you want to. But like, there's no pressure there, even, yeah, you know? Like, just do your thing. Like, and, and take, hopefully there's something here you just like, you're spreading flowers around, and hopefully people come by and find them valuable a little 2k. Listen, you make mistakes sometimes, and the same thing, like, look, I misspoke, or I said something that wasn't right. I'm sorry. You know what I mean? Like, I'm I'm talking a lot here. I'm doing my best, you know? Anyway, I think net positive times 1000

Morgan 1:16:02 Absolutely? Yeah. Did you get two more chameleons? By the way, what are you

Scott Benner 1:16:06 doing? You trying to make me sound like a weirdo on the internet?

Morgan 1:16:09 I don't worry. I have two leopard geckos, and you saw my crested gecko last night on the page. All right,

Scott Benner 1:16:14 so here's what happened. And then we gotta stop, because Rob tells me, these are too long. Ah, we had a whole conversation in the car the other day. He's like, I think 50 minutes is the sweet spot. I'm like, Dude, I can't get anything done in 50 minutes. What are we talking about? So, long story short, my entire life I wanted a chameleon. I never told one person last Christmas, a couple days before Christmas, we were all standing around in the kitchen, and I just kind of as a conversation starter, said, Tell me something. Like, my whole family was there. I was like, tell me something you've like, you know, always wanted to do that you've never done. And everybody went around the room, it got back to me, and I just shocked everybody by saying something that they had never heard before. Like, I've been married to my wife, like, nearly 30 years. I've got kids in our 20s. I've never said this out loud? Oh, my goodness. I said I'd really like to keep a chameleon one day. And everyone was like, What? What you're, what he what? Hold on. I say, What do

Morgan 1:17:10 you say? This one wants a what? Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:17:11 hold on. Hold on. What was the A, come on. And I'm like, Yeah. And I started talking about like they're so I find them very relaxing. They

Morgan 1:17:22 are. They force you to move slower and kind of breathe and think you move fast. You could hurt them.

Scott Benner 1:17:27 Even while you and I are talking, I can see one of them just moving so slowly through his enclosure, right? And it's very it's very relaxing. And plus, they're difficult to keep so then the question was like, why have you never done this before? Like, you know, like, we're not wealthy, but we could put a cage together and throw a chameleon in it. Why would you never have done it? And I said, they're very their care is incredibly difficult. And I just that caregivers thing that you you guys, get off me from the podcast, like, it extends to everything. I don't want to let anything down, probably because my parents, Mama there, yeah, my parents are divorced. Like, you know, there's probably reasons, but like, I don't want to let anything down. And yeah, the next day, my wife sends me off, right before Christmas with a list of things to do, and one of them is to, like, whip through a pet store and buy, like, like, stocking stuff or stuff for our dogs. And I'm in there, and as I'm walking out with my hand full, and I'm also a boy, so I'm irritated that I'm buying stocking stuffers for dog. They don't care. There's already a basket of toys. We can just throw them back out on the floor, you know what I mean? But my wife's like, no, they need something to open. I'm like, they're dogs. I'm pretty sure they don't, but whatever. And so, like, I'm walking out of the pet store, and I hear this, and I look over and there's this little baby chameleon, like, walked past, and it was, like, shocked by me, and it was like, Hey, what the buddy. And so I got home, and I said to my wife, I was a craziest god damn thing. I have never in my life seen a chameleon in a pet store, but there was one right there two seconds. I mentioned it in passing. I do not bring it up again. I didn't say, y'all should go buy it for me. I didn't say anything like that, right? So then Christmas morning comes, and we're all done with our gifts, and the dogs have opened up their squeaky toys, and of course, and Arden goes, Hey, there's one more gift for you, but you got to come up to my room for it. And I was like, What the hell. So we all get up and start moving to her room. Because when my wife started moving, I was like, something's happening. Because this is the point in the morning, she wasn't gonna get up again, you know? And I was like, Why is every and I go up and as they're opening the door, I think to myself, Oh, my God, it's gonna be a chameleon. Oh, you do. Don't be a chameleon. I don't know how to take care of a chameleon. The thing's gonna die in five seconds, right? Yeah. And I open the door, and they're like, We gotta eat chameleon. And I was like, and I went, like, I'm a dad. I'm like, Oh my God, thank you. This is awesome. The voice of my head is like, you

Speaker 1 1:19:48 get it, Mother, why did you do this? But

Scott Benner 1:19:52 I'm like, That's so nice. Thank you. But I just realized in that moment, I'm like, I'm gonna have to now give over. And it ended up being a solid month. Of, like, YouTube videos and just trying to figure everything out, which, by the

Morgan 1:20:05 way, whatever did we do that? So sweet that you check out like that. I'm gonna

Scott Benner 1:20:09 kill this chameleon. I can't do that. Yeah, by the way, that's where, and I always hope the guy hears it. One day, I found the chameleon equivalent of me. Oh, dear. It was, did you strangest goddamn thing? Like, like, there he is, like, with, like, a lot of the basic ways that I think of talking to people, he's doing the same thing and spreading, trying his best to spread good information. And he's even got like, people who don't like the way he does it and like, and I'm like, Oh my God. I'm like, this is exactly the same. It's like, I'm looking into like a mirror, and instead of me looking back, it's a guy who's like, I'm saying all the same things about chameleons and having all the same experiences about chameleons that you're having in diabetes. My God, so bizarre, you know? But anyway, I learned how to take care of the chameleon. She is the most well pampered, $75 pet store chameleon you've ever seen in your life, like she's living a better life than we are. And I'm glad to hear, yeah, doing great. But it is not long after that that I think this is not the kind of chameleon I wanted.

Morgan 1:21:12 Oh no, oh no. So that's why, oh so

Scott Benner 1:21:15 I was like, okay, no big deal, right? Like she's gonna live like, six, seven years, and I'll get another one, like, and then one day I was like, Yeah, I'm 52 seven years from now to be 50 9am. I gonna really buy a chameleon when I'm 59 and I was like, probably not. And I just relegated myself to the idea that I just like, maybe that's not gonna happen, you know? Yeah, but I did look around in the meantime, and I found this breeder in California who breeds the kinds of chameleons that I wanted. And his stuff is like, man, his animals are really wonderful, you know? Oh, good to me. And he has like this, this success breeding them where it's not a thing that people do. Well, breeding, right? Because I think these eggs take almost two years to actually gestate and to hatch, Oh, wow. Like, this real, like, the whole thing. Like, yeah, it's a whole thing, and he has a lot of success with it. So I bookmark his site, and I'm like, well, when I'm ready, I'm gonna go figure this out. And then I look at his site one day because it pops up in front of me and because I followed it on Facebook, and he's like, Well, here's my last hatchlings. You know, so sad to say, I don't think I'm gonna be breathing these chameleons. Oh my god. I'm like, you motherfucker. And I was like, I was like, so now I have, now I'm sitting in this chair thinking, Am I gonna buy another chameleon? Because I'm an adult, and that seems ridiculous,

Morgan 1:22:40 but you're an adult, and you can buy,

Scott Benner 1:22:42 I'm gonna do it like, so, yeah, anyway, so I have this again, like a, literally, like a pet store Veiled Chameleon. She's so nasty, like she won't let me anywhere near her, like she's just like she's, I've tried to explain to her that this great life she's living is because of me, and she could maybe love her and you care about her attack, she don't seem to care about it also. That's how my wife treats me, too. So I'm used to it. And then I have a Parsons chameleon, oh, which will live 12 to 15 years and grow up to maybe as much as 24 inches long. Oh, cool.

Morgan 1:23:15 Yeah. My geckos will live to be about 15 to 20 years long as well. I've got one that was supposed to be incubated a female. Turned out he was a male. And not only that, he's a giant leopard gecko, so he's 30 grams heavier than he, like a normal

Scott Benner 1:23:29 gecko is, and that's a male. Does that get up to almost a foot long? He's

Morgan 1:23:32 not quite a foot long. But I brought him to the vet clinic because he had a Hemi penis prolapse, and so they had to go and pop it back in. Yeah, and yeah, and we've ever seen I had to do it myself. Actually, a few weeks afterwards, he did it again. And so because I had seen what they did, I'm like, I'm not gonna spend another $375 I gave him a soak, and I did what they did, and he was okay, and he hasn't had it happen again. I was maybe

Scott Benner 1:23:59 a year ago, nice, but he's the biggest leopard gecko they ever saw, the

Morgan 1:24:02 biggest leopard before they've ever seen. He's that big boy. I got him a 40 gallon tank, even though, like, the 20 is generally the normal size for them. Like, no, we're going big.

Scott Benner 1:24:11 My niece just rescued a leopard gecko. They are so sweet. They're one

Morgan 1:24:15 of the best temperaments. And you know what? They poop in a corner. They are one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest reptile you could own, because they pick one corner and they will poop in that corner. I have

Scott Benner 1:24:25 bioactive setups for my chameleons. So they poop on the ground and then, and then it just gets kind of taken in at night, the the ISO pods and the spring tails come along and eat. Oh, okay, so

Morgan 1:24:35 that's what I was talking with the the lady on the Facebook page last night. I want to do a bioactive tank from my crested gecko, because I didn't know you could have some of my favorite plants there inside the tanks. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:24:45 it's fine. It's actually nice, because I basically, I have, like, a little Arboretum in here with me, and it happens to have things crawling through it. So anyway, so what ended up happening for the third one, just so you understand, yeah, okay, is that like, I became really interested in it. I paid more. Attention. And it turns out, I live very close to one, the only guy, one of two guys in the country that breeds these tiny, little carpet chameleons. Now they only live, they only live, like, two or three years. They have a much shorter life, but they also require a much smaller enclosure, which I have space for. So I was like, I'm gonna get a carpet chameleon too. So how big are they? Um, she's probably, like, seven inches long, like, tip of her tail to her snout right now, but she's gonna get, she'll get her body's gonna get bigger, but I don't think her overall, like, she's tiny, probably on the size of Apollo, then she's super colorful and, like, like, growing great and everything. But I just, I come in here in the morning, I feed them, and like, while I'm recording or working, I just like, I don't know, like he's looking at me right now, like he's walking across the branch and he's looking at me like, are you going to kill me? I'll hold really still for a second to be sure you're not going to kill me. Oh, my goodness, that's how they live their whole life. They just, yeah. They just in fear, yeah. It's why they want to be up high, you know. So then he's like, all right, nothing's gonna kill me. Then he'll take a couple more steps,

Morgan 1:26:06 and then they're little mittens as they grab around things. Yeah, they're so cute.

Scott Benner 1:26:11 Well, they're cute on the little one, the big one, like, makes scary. He's strong. He's he could grow. He could grow to 500 grams. Oh my Yeah. So he's 300 now, and he's a year old.

Morgan 1:26:23 Oh, mine's mine's 130 Alaska. He's the big boy, and that's like, my biggest reptile.

Scott Benner 1:26:28 Yeah, you'd be stumped by this. He looks like a dinosaur. Oh, my goodness, my

Morgan 1:26:32 brother had a blue tongue Skink. That was cool. Okay, she passed away, unfortunately. So

Scott Benner 1:26:38 I had to stop looking online at things, because the crocodile

Morgan 1:26:41 skinks are expensive, but they're my favorite skin Yeah, because

Scott Benner 1:26:44 I saw one day, I'm like, these crocodile skinks are so cool. I know you can't, like, house things together, like you can't. So if you could, then I know I'd have, like,

Morgan 1:26:59 salt fish tank. You just huge one side of the wall the room good to go, yeah?

Scott Benner 1:27:06 But anyway, this is it for me. I'm good, yeah, yeah. Three is enough, yeah, it's pretty embarrassing. I will, um, I will take their chameleons and kids, yeah, yeah, that's the whole thing. But I'll take a photo of this enclosure for you insanity of when we get off, so you can see it. So I would love that. Listen, she's great, the Veiled and, and I do love her, because she runs all over the place and she has a terrible attitude, so it's fun. But, yeah, but he's just like, he's the one I wanted, like, when I was a kid. This is the chameleon I was your dream chameleon having, yeah, or I wouldn't have, you know, they didn't know that. And, yeah, anyway, I should end this story by saying it's like, one of the nicest things anyone's ever done for me was like, That's really sweet. Yeah, go get that. But I'm an I'm a rep. I don't think I could do a snake, I have to be perfectly honest.

Morgan 1:27:53 No, I mean, I love snakes, but I, my mom's terrified of snakes, so that was kind of never an option. And then I just, I love my little critters that can walk on feet and kind of travel a bit easier and not get themselves stuck in places. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:28:05 I do have to admit, though, and they're very common pets, but people who have bearded dragons, my

Morgan 1:28:11 brother, yeah, he's had two so far. They're really common, but they're more upkeep than people realize. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:28:16 I that the one thing about the chameleons that you wouldn't know until you really, until you dig completely deep into everything they need, is that everything they need, with the almost, with the exception of food, you can automate. Oh, so like, basically what happens here, using the Parsons as an example, there's a misting system in his cage, right, right? Comes on, and it mists him and so that he can, you know, drink, if he wants to drink from leaves. Generally speaking, he doesn't need to drink, though, because there's also a fogger that, oh, okay, brings up his humidity at night, and then he actually hydrates through breathing in the fog.

Morgan 1:28:55 But they don't cool, yeah? They don't like to drink as much, do they from a bowl?

Scott Benner 1:28:58 There's no standing water in any chameleon cages. Like for drink cool, yeah. So they just intake it from their environment. They breathe it in, and that's how they get it in. So if you fog them to the right level for the right time, they're hydrated, right? And then the cages have fans on them that are on timers for air flow. They have lights that are on timers for UVB and for and for regular light. So with that, with the exception of having to put the food in, you know, if you go away for a couple of days or something like, they get everything they need still. And then

Morgan 1:29:30 that's one thing I do like about the Leopard Geckos they only need every two to three days, yeah. And so as long as they've got their standing water, they're, they're okay, right? If I go off for, like, a weekend camping trip or something like that. I went

Scott Benner 1:29:42 away for a week recently, and we just had like, a pet sitter came in and just pet them. Yeah?

Morgan 1:29:46 Those that would be really nice. I don't have long enough vacations to ever need one of those, thankfully. But that's one of the reasons that they're awesome, too, because my brother knows how to take care of them. Yeah, since he's had reptiles himself as well, so he's always been my carer whenever I was gone for a. For a week.

Scott Benner 1:30:00 Yeah, yeah. That's anyway I could talk about it forever, because I do find, I do find it incredibly react or, like, just incredibly, like, reflective and relaxing to be around. They are, yeah, he's staring at me right now, like he I'm, here's what this stare means. I'm pretty certain bring a roach over here and give it to me. I

Morgan 1:30:21 am hungry. Where's the food? And

Scott Benner 1:30:23 I imagine now people listening are like, did he say roach?

Unknown Speaker 1:30:27 But yeah,

Morgan 1:30:28 no, the roach with mealworms is what mine. That's mine. Roaches are illegal. Up here the dubious,

Scott Benner 1:30:33 yeah, I have a small bin of them, and I'm letting them breed because they're so expensive. I'm like, I don't want to buy them. All the

Morgan 1:30:40 meal worms are pretty decently priced, but you can, you can multiply them by, I had 500 count, uh, probably sitting in this one tub, and it I just kept cycling them. I didn't pay leopard gecko food for a year, yeah, until my breeding system died off. I have to make a new one.

Scott Benner 1:30:55 Yeah, you don't realize when you buy a reptile, you're about to become a bug breeder. And you don't, yeah,

Morgan 1:31:01 part of the first thought, you figure that out afterwards. So

Scott Benner 1:31:03 now I'm 53 and when people say, what do you do for a living? I go, I make a podcast. And then they say, and what do you do for fun? I go, I have a chameleon. And I'm like, oh my god, I shouldn't tell people any of this. Yeah. Do you know what it's like to tell other adults you have a podcast? Oh,

Morgan 1:31:19 I'd imagine it's, it's probably you get a lot of questioning looks, and they just don't understand. Frustrating, a little bit too, because you can't quite convey how important the podcast is to everybody, because it is, like, 15 million downloads. It's a huge amount. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:31:33 also, it's 17 and a half now. But thank you.

Morgan 1:31:36 Wow. Congratulations. I push it wherever I can. Like, if somebody's saying anything, like, I don't understand. Like, just watch podcast. I

Scott Benner 1:31:42 appreciate it. Yeah, no, but it is really strange, because it's not a job. I mean, like, for most people, they're like, Wait, what did you say? Yeah, it's like, telling somebody you're the tight end for the bills, but yeah, like, it sounds ridiculous. Like, no, that's not money off of that, like, a livable wage. Yeah, that's the other thing. They're like, any reasonable adult later goes, I'm sorry, and this, it generates income, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, yeah. I'm like, I'm like, you know, I don't think I'm gonna, like, buy the Taj Mahal anytime soon, but, like, but it keeps everything

Morgan 1:32:11 running, and you have a livable wage. And so the people complaining is one of the things that I've seen as well. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:32:18 my wife has a job too, but, like, it helps pay the bills, and I save a little money at the end. And, you know, and living

Morgan 1:32:24 my life, three chameleons who are very happy little spoiled babies, I

Scott Benner 1:32:27 can afford, Dubia Roaches that too, which I don't even know how much those cost. Well, that's why I'm breeding them, because they weren't too then they do get inquisitive. They're like, I don't understand. Like, why is that a viable way to like, why is that a job? You know? Yeah. And then when you explain it, they go, oh, oh, that sounds great. You've

Morgan 1:32:44 hit a niche where you just, you got it, you rolled with it, and you've managed to keep it going.

Scott Benner 1:32:48 It's funny. It's amazing for it not to be on purpose too. Yeah, yeah,

Morgan 1:32:53 because you just started a blog, and then you started making a podcast. Because back in whenever you started, was 2010 around then it was popular

Scott Benner 1:33:00 podcast in 2015 it only because Katie Carr told me I was good at talking to people. Oh, okay,

Morgan 1:33:08 yeah. No, that makes sense. You do have a very well how to explain this. Well formed, well thought out. You're meticulous about things in ways that others aren't, and so you're able to pick apart information that most people were just brushed by,

Scott Benner 1:33:20 it's interesting. I had, um, Erica, you know, have you ever listened to any Erica's episodes? I think I heard one. Okay, it was a bit ago. Yeah, she, she and I were talking the other day, and I'm gonna have to bring her back on talk about it more. But she said we were talking privately and and she said, you know, you you had a therapy. I either had a therapist or a psychiatrist. On Sandy, she was on recently, and during it, she's like, you could be a therapist. And I was like, I could, like, and then you do have that affiliate, yeah. And I was like, really? And then Erica said, I heard her say that, and she's like, I have to tell you, like, you actually, you do a lot of things that are taught to therapists. And I was like, I have no idea about that. So she was telling me. And I was like, I can't even remember everything she said right now, because I don't have that kind of mind. But she's like, No, that's fair. Me neither. Goldfish brain. When people say things, you ask questions correctly, you do this, your follow up is really good, and like, on and on, and so that was, that was kind of a so, all really interesting. Yeah,

Morgan 1:34:18 definitely. You've learned how to have the art of conversation extremely well, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:34:23 I appreciate it. Okay, I'm gonna let you go, go live your life. Be Canadian,

Morgan 1:34:27 yeah, Canadian work, yeah. I know

Scott Benner 1:34:31 you're going to Don't, don't worry about it. Hold on one second for me, today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 you can experience the ever since 365 CGM system for as low as $199 for a full year. Visit Eversense cgm.com/juicebox for more details and eligibility earlier. You heard me talking about blue circle health, the free virtual type one diabetes care, education and support program for adults. And I know it sounds too good to be true, but I swear it's real. Thanks to funding from a big T 1d philanthropy group, blue circle health doesn't bill your insurance or charge you a cent. In other words, it's free. They can help you with things like carb counting, insurance navigation, diabetes technology, insulin adjustments, peer support, Prescription Assistance and much more. So, if you're tired of waiting nine months to get in with your endo or your educator, you can get an appointment with their team within one to two weeks. This program is showing what T 1d care can and should look like. Blue circle health is currently available in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. If you live in one of those states, go to blue circle health.org to sign up today. The link is in the show notes, and please help me to spread the word blue circle health had to buy an ad because people don't believe that it's free, but it is. They're trying to give you free care if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. It's ready to go right now. And like I said, they're adding states so quickly in 2025 that you want to follow them on social media at Blue circle health, and you can also keep checking blue circle health.org to see when your free care is available to you. Hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com, you.

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Misdiagnosed for over six years, Polly fought disbelief from doctors despite clear T1D antibodies. Her journey from a misguided rice diet to a staggering A1C of 17 tells a story of resilience, frustration, and finally, clarity.

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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 00:00 Welcome back, friends. You are listening to the Juicebox Podcast.

Polly 00:13 My name is Polly, and I live in Northern Nevada. I'm excited to talk to you.

Scott Benner 00:18 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. I know this is going to sound crazy, but blue circle health is a non profit that's offering a totally free virtual type one diabetes clinical care education and support program for adults 18 and up. You heard me right, free. No strings attached, just free. Currently, if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama or Missouri, you're eligible for blue circle health right now, but they are adding states quickly in 2025 so make sure to follow them at Blue circle health on social media and make yourself familiar with blue circle health.org. Blue circle health is free. It is without cost. There are no strings attached. I am not hiding anything from you. Blue circle health.org, you know why they had to buy an ad. No one believes it's free. The Diabetes variables series from the Juicebox Podcast goes over all the little things that affect your diabetes that you might not think about, travel and exercise to hydration and even trampolines. Juicebox podcast.com, go up in the menu and click on diabetes variables. Today's podcast is sponsored by the insulin pump that my daughter has been wearing since she was four years old, Omnipod, omnipod.com/juicebox, you too can have the same insulin pump that my daughter has been wearing every day for 16 years. The episode you're about to enjoy was brought to you by Dexcom, the Dexcom g7 the same CGM that my daughter wears. You can learn more and get started today at my link, dexcom.com/juicebox,

Polly 02:07 my name is Polly, and I live in Northern Nevada. I'm excited to talk to

Scott Benner 02:12 you, excellent Polly, thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. You're welcome so you have the diabetes, as they say,

Polly 02:20 I do got a touch of it. Just

Scott Benner 02:24 a splash, a big splash. When did it splash on you?

Polly 02:27 Well, got a very long, embarrassing, I guess, path so about 12 years ago. Okay, my husband said, you haven't been to the doctor in a very long time, I think it's time. So I really dislike, probably dislike and distrust doctors. And so I was friendly with a very capable midwife, so I went to see her. She said, What's your a 1c and that's like, What the heck are you talking about? And she was like, you've never had your a 1c done. And I said, No. She goes, Well, let's do

Scott Benner 03:10 it. How old are you at that point, 12 years ago? Probably about

Polly 03:13 39 okay. And so she did it, and she did a bunch of other stuff. And so she goes, Oh, it was really cold that day. And she said, this a 1c needs to be a little bit warm. So she's like, let me go put it in the bathroom and I'll be right back. So she came back about five minutes later, and she was white. And she was like,

Scott Benner 03:38 I peed on your test. I'm so sorry. We have to do it again, by the way. When does it get cold in in Nevada, I don't understand. I'm in northern Oh, I see in the mountains. I say, go ahead.

Polly 03:48 Yeah. She was white. She goes, you've got a problem. And I was like, What are you talking about? She goes, this is 12.60 I said, What are you talking about? I knew, I mean, I, I knew absolutely nothing, right? And so she said, this is indicative of diabetes. I've always been overweight to some degree. At that particular point I was losing weight. And, you know, we all know why now. And she said, You need to go to the ER right now and get this checked out, and then get to an endocrinologist. And so I said, No, I'm not going to do that. And I had just read about we were following a diet called the McDougall diet at that time, okay, and it's a low fat vegan diet, and I was really getting serious about it, which is why I thought I was losing weight. And Dr McDougle had just posted on his newsletter about this diet called the rice diet, which was used originally. Been formed for high blood pressure, but people had had really good success 4050, years ago with diabetes, with, I mean, it's, it's really a miracle, and it it's not used anymore, because it is tough. I mean, it is a tough diet, and now we have medication that they didn't have back then. So I said, I'm going to try the Bryce diet. She was like, I'll give you third she's like, I'll give you 90 days, and then I'm not going to treat you anymore. She's like, you've got to do something. Polly. Let me stop

Scott Benner 05:32 you for a second. I'm going to live in this moment for a second. A, 12. A, 1c. Are you thinking now, in hindsight, she thought you had type two diabetes. Oh yeah, absolutely, okay, all right, because at a 12 A, 1c I'm gonna go eat rice. Is like, well, then you're gonna come back with a 15 A, 1c like, what are we doing here? You know what? I mean,

Polly 05:53 yeah, yeah. So she, she's like, well, you've gone this far. Basically, let's do it your way, and then we'll do it my way. So when to do this, and it's not just rice, it's rice and fruit, that's all you eat very little. I think I was at like 900 calories a day. She had a scheduling conflict, so we had to go four months. So I went four months on this diet. So I went to see her after four months, and my a, 1c, was 6.2

Scott Benner 06:23 okay, and had you lost weight? Surprisingly,

Polly 06:27 when you're when you're sick and on the right side, you don't always lose weight, is what I found out eventually. So I lost 18 pounds, which with such little calories, was surprising to me. I was expecting the weight to just lose the ball off. That was my introduction to diabetes. And I thought, Hey, I've cracked code. You know, you went from

Scott Benner 06:54 this 12 to the six, yeah, not thinking that you probably had Lada and you had like, like, like, ebbing and flowing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. I see

Polly 07:04 I did the modified version of the rice diet. I had never felt better in my life. I'm a pretty big advocate of this diet, because so many people I've studied it, and so many people are do really well, but it's tough. I mean, just eating rice and fruit so food became non fuel at that point.

Scott Benner 07:24 Yeah, hey, give me a second here. Key components of the rice diet. White Rice is a staple fruits and vegetables. The diet includes fresh fruits and vegetables, which provide essential vitamins, minerals and fiber, low sodium, minimal animal products, low fat, low protein, whole unprocessed foods. That sounds like the diet, yeah. Okay, that's it, okay? And it runs in phases. Is that, right? There's like a detox phase. And the Dexcom g7 is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and it features a lightning fast 30 minute warm up time. That's right from the time you put on the Dexcom g7 till the time you're getting readings, 30 minutes. That's pretty great. It also has a 12 hour grace period, so you can swap your sensor when it's convenient for you. All that on top of it being small, accurate, incredibly wearable and light these things, in my opinion, make the Dexcom g7 a no brainer. The Dexcom g7 comes with way more than just this, up to 10 people can follow you. You can use it with type one, type two, or gestational diabetes. It's covered by all sorts of insurances. And this might be the best part. It might be the best part alerts and alarms that are customizable, so that you can be alerted at the levels that make sense to you. Dexcom.com/juice, dot com, slash juice box. Links in the show notes. Links at Juicebox podcast.com, to Dexcom and all the sponsors. When you use my links, you're supporting the production of the podcast and helping to keep it free and plentiful. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omnipod. And before I tell you about Omnipod, the device, I'd like to tell you about Omnipod, the company. I approached Omnipod in 2015 and asked them to buy an ad on a podcast that I hadn't even begun to make yet because the podcast didn't have any listeners, all I could promise them was that I was going to try to help people living with type one diabetes. And that was enough for Omnipod. They bought their first ad, and I used that money to support myself while I was growing the Juicebox Podcast. You might even say that Omnipod is the firm foundation of the Juicebox Podcast, and it's actually the firm foundation of how my daughter manages her type one diabetes every day. Omnipod.com/juicebox whether you want the Omnipod five or the Omnipod dash, using my link, let's Omnipod know what a good decision they made in 2015 and continue to make to this day. Omnipod is easy to use, easy to fill. So easy to wear, and I know that because my daughter has been wearing one every day since she was four years old, and she will be 20 this year, there is not enough time in an ad for me to tell you everything that I know about Omnipod, but please take a look omnipod.com/juicebox I think Omnipod could be a good friend to you, just like it has been to my daughter and my family. Yeah, there's like

Polly 10:27 a there's like the first phase, which is just what you mentioned. And then you can add, they joke that you can add that you got chicken, so you can add, like, protein. And I never did, because I just wanted to jump in. I knew nothing. I had never even heard the word A, 1c, at that point, yeah. So I thought, Hey, I've looked this, you know, I'm good. So I stayed on a modified version, and I started losing weight. And I thought, Hey, I am good. And I didn't lose, you know, massive amounts. It was very steady. So I thought, you know,

Scott Benner 11:07 I'm doing this healthy, even I am good, right? That

Polly 11:11 went on for about five years. And then the best way to say it is my mental state just collapsed. I couldn't think. I was upset all the time. We own our own business, so I was just under a lot of pressure. I was putting myself under a lot of pressure. I really don't remember what caused me to get up one morning and call my reproductive endocrinologist that I had had 16 years earlier when I was trying to get pregnant with my son, and I said, I need to see an endocrinologist. And I really, I can't tell you what got me to that point. I called him, and they said, Oh yeah, across the parking lot, go see doctor so and

Scott Benner 11:57 so, I guess what got you there is five years of rice and apples. But, you know, yeah,

Polly 12:04 so I called and I couldn't get in, and I just felt, at that particular moment, I felt very desperate. So at the time, I didn't have insurance. So we have a wonderful nonprofit. It's not the health department, but it's a medical facility. So I called them, and they got me in that day, and they did an A, 1c and it was 17, I think Jesus, it was during COVID. Lady, you know how things stick in your brain, the lady, the physicians assistant that was helping me, she's Russian, and she's just one of these flappy people, you know. And she had on one of those masks that look like a duck bill, you know what I'm talking about, that people were

Scott Benner 12:59 I'm still stuck wondering what flappy means. What is it when people are flapping? Just a

Polly 13:04 real excitable person, oh, you know, I gotcha. And she had on this mask. So here I am, you know, knowing that my health is just falling apart. And this Russian lady, you know, is just flapping around the room with this, you know, duck bill mask. And I wanted to laugh, but it was just crazy. So anyway, so she's like, you gotta get to the emergency room. You gotta get to the emergency room. And I was like, okay, okay, I'll do it. Shut up, you know, just calm the hell down. You know, go to the car. My husband's in the car waiting for me because it's COVID and he can't come in. And I did not know he had called his brother, who is a doctor, and he had not been able to get back in touch with his brother. As I get in the car, you know, my head is just spinning. I'm saying this lady is saying I got to go to the ER. And he said, I'd really rather talk to my brother before we go, just to see what we're looking at. And I thought that was reasonable. And then the phone, my phone, rings, and it's the endocrinologist that I had called that morning. It's we had a cancelation. We can see you

Scott Benner 14:18 tomorrow. Did you tell them what had just happened, yeah?

Polly 14:21 Well, it was just the receptionist. And so I told her, because at

Scott Benner 14:25 that point, Polly, you're five years late to go to the ER,

Unknown Speaker 14:28 yeah,

Scott Benner 14:31 like, one more day,

Polly 14:33 one more day. Well, exactly, that's exactly what I was thinking. And I told her, and she said, she's like, you can go to the ER. And she said, then we'll see you. But she's like, you know, she's like, you've gone this far. Why don't you wait till tomorrow? I

Scott Benner 14:47 have to be honest for everyone listening, I don't think that's a reasonable medical response. I

Polly 14:52 know she was just receptionist. So I was talking to my husband, and he's like, I really would rather talk to my brother. We can come. Back into town and go to the ER if he says to go. So he calls us back as soon as we walk in the door. We tell him start to finish. And he said, If this is a reputable endocrinologist, and not just, you know, like a general practitioner kind of thing, he's like, I would just go tomorrow and see what happens. Okay, so we went tomorrow, the next day, and once again, and I'm gonna sound like pooping on physicians assistants, I have not had good experience with physicians assistants. Okay, so the physicians assistant at the at the endocrinologist comes in, oh, I forgot to my brother in law, is a very he's very thorough. What kind of doctor is he neurologist? Okay, he's very thorough, and he's very kind. He's just the tops in his field. So he said, you really ought to go get this thing called a gad test. He said, I doubt you have type one, but at least he said, When, when an A, 1c, is that high that might you might have type one? And he said, that's going to tell you if you do or you don't. So we ran back into town and went to a walk in and we did the GAD test. And what's the other one? Forget it's

Scott Benner 16:32 you did the auto antibodies for the for the GAD and the C peptide,

Polly 16:36 C peptide. So he told us to do those. We did those. And the next morning, we got it, and they they texted, they faxed it to me, and I looked at the, you know, the range, and my range was

Scott Benner 16:51 on the back of the paper, to flip it over to find it. Yeah, I would imagine. I said, look

Polly 16:57 at I told my husband. I was like, Look at this. I'm not even remotely in the range. And he says, Does that mean you have type one? Because we didn't know, sure. And I was like, it looks like it. And he was like, Well, that might explain a lot. So I get to the endocrinologist, and I show him these tests, he would not look at him

Scott Benner 17:21 because he wanted to run him and bill you for them. No, not at all.

Polly 17:25 He wouldn't run them. He goes, if you had type one, you'd be dead. That's what he told me. I swear

Scott Benner 17:30 to God, Polly, I gotta tell you something. I don't know if I've said this in a while, but the whole thing, it's all being held together by good luck and duct tape. Do you understand? No kidding, yeah, that. I don't mean you or your health. I mean everything. We're the worst stewards of logic people. Just how many people like that? One doctor, I'm five years back in this story, that doctor knew what to do, told you to do it. You said, No. And she went, Okay. What she should have said is, Polly, are you a doctor? Shut up and go to the ER, right. But instead she goes, Polly wants to try the rice diet. We'll go with like, Are you kidding me? And also, you're not a person who goes to the doctor, so you're trying not to go to the doctor to begin with, and she should have pushed back on you. Then no. And then your life falls apart. You end up in another place. Go to the emergency room. Then you leave, how about sit here and I'm gonna call an ambulance for you. Do you know what I mean? Or, like, go get your husband, or we'll go get your husband who's out in the car, or something. Like, everybody just like, hopes it's gonna be okay. It's fascinating. And then you get to an endocrinologist who tells you, Oh, if you had type one, you'd be dead, yeah, unless No. And now I'm sorry, this is very frustrating. Go ahead, keep talking. He says that my

Polly 18:49 frustration, you got out of your mind. I knew enough. I mean, I can read, you know, yeah, now so I could read that the ranges were off, and I saw that with my own two eyes. And here he is. I'll give him credit where credit is due. He slapped a Libra two on me and said, This is going to tell you where you are, and we need to bring the numbers down, and that's what we're going to do. So he slapped a CGM on me, gave me ozempic and gave me Jardiance and, oh, and I'd skipped an entire portion of the

Scott Benner 19:35 but Polly, how does he ignore the C peptide and got antibody? I have no idea. Like, has he did everything right if you had type two diabetes, but he's looking at testing that says you have type he won't

Polly 19:46 even look at it. He never looked at it. He would not look at it. I know. I mean, we've considered we are not litigious people, but we have considered Su and him, because it was so i. Malpractice so much. I don't

Scott Benner 20:01 understand anything that happens. It just in general. Like some of you have great doctors, like you just do. But for those who don't run into great doctors, this is the other side of it. Yeah, it's not like a slow gradient from fantastic down to amazing down to either you get a good one or you get this. It seems to be what it is anyway. I'm sorry, yeah, you said you missed something in the story. Wouldn't you

Polly 20:24 miss? Yeah, so I failed to say about a year before the flappy physicians assistant, I went to see a naturopath doctor, and she came very highly recommended. We were back on the Type Two diagnosis, and she had put me on what's the pill? Oh, God,

Scott Benner 20:49 Metformin. I'm in your head. Polly, everything you haven't thought of I've known today. Go ahead. I know. There you are. And

Polly 20:54 so she had put me on Metformin, and I must have had some kind of reaction. You make a lot of poopy It was like nothing I could even imagine. Much less had ever happened before. It was terrible. Okay, so that's when I went back on the rice diet and all that. So, so there was that portion there, and she was like, you've got to get to an endocrinologist. And I was like, No, we're going to do this. Blah, blah, blah. So, so here I am diagnosing myself. So anyway, so I'm with this physician's assistant, and he's throwing all these type two medications on me, and he was just a terrible person. I mean, I can't say anything nice about him. He had no bedside manner. He wouldn't listen. He would yell at me. It was just my husband. The only time he was nice to me was when he had a trainee physician's assistant there, and she was very cute, and so he was flirting with her, and that was the only time he was nice to me in the six months I saw him. Are you so me? No,

Scott Benner 22:05 Pauly, are you telling me that you only get good medical care when the doctor's showing off for a pretty girl in the room? Exactly.

Polly 22:12 It was terrible. I don't know what was going on with the MD that was in that practice, because I tried getting in touch with her, telling her, you know, this is what's going on, and they would never let me talk to her. She dealt with the really big cases. I guess it was, it was, I

Scott Benner 22:29 don't know, I just, I hold on a second. You're exhausting me, not you. But this story is exhausting me. I know. Oh my god.

Polly 22:41 It was, it was, it was an interesting I'm trying

Scott Benner 22:43 to picture me walking into my doctor's appointment going, I hope there's a young, perky girl in the room so that my doctor tries.

Polly 22:51 I'll tell you the cherry on top of the story with this guy after your episode about ever since I thought, oh, that sounds great. I would like to give it a try. So I call ever since, and guess who is the only one who does the implant in my area?

Scott Benner 23:11 Doctor. Feel good. Yeah.

Polly 23:12 And the girl of the and I started just laughing, Catholic. I started cackling. And I was like, No, so we'll have to try something else and shoot. I'm

Scott Benner 23:24 going to tell you something, because when this recording comes out, it should be the truth, but they're going to have a one year. Their sensor is going to go for one year soon. Oh, cool. Ever since put it in once. Here's what I understand. Is coming one insertion a year, and if it all works out, it's only going to require calibration once a week. Well, yeah, it's pretty awesome. I mean, it's a big leap for that device. So just imagine not having to change your device, like 10 days, 14 days, however you're changing yours now, can't get knocked off, can't fall off in a pool. If you want to stop using it for an hour. You don't have to restart over again with a new device like, man, it's just a lot of value there. It's coming. You know what? I mean, it's pretty awesome. Is it a thing? You actually can see

Polly 24:09 excited about it, because right around the time of that episode, you know how you can go a year without having any issues, and then it's like one thing after, I had to call libre or Abbott for six replacements. And the lady on the phone was like, what? Why are you doing six one time? I was like, I have not had time. It's been one thing after. So I got six replacements.

Scott Benner 24:37 I can't call every time your thing blows up, I know. And it was just like,

Polly 24:41 one thing, I hit it once, once, twice. It just didn't work. You know, another one. So really excited to hear about the ever since,

Scott Benner 24:50 yeah, I think a big part of why people might consider switching to it. I mean, once it goes to the year and but again, by the way, that it should be at a year. By the time this episode comes out, it should be that should already be by ever since cgm.com/juicebox, go look, if you want to see what it says. But the idea that you won't have to mess with devices, like, I mean, devices, listen, they're all terrific, and they add to your life, but then they're almost like, buying a pet, you know what? I mean? Like, you're like, Oh, I got a thing. It's so cute. I love looking at it, but I also have to clean out its cage, and I gotta, like, give it water, yeah? Like, so you get a CGM, like, It's amazing all the things it brings to you, but now that's also part of your job. So a lot of people are gonna see the value in going to a doctor once a year. Again, this thing inserted, calibrating it once a week, and not thinking about it other than that, I think. But we'll see what happens. So I don't know, does your story get better? Does anybody realize you have type one diabetes at any point in this story?

Polly 25:48 So I'll, I'll just go, keep going. So

Scott Benner 25:52 she's like, Polly's like, Don't knock me off this course. Yeah. I mean,

Polly 25:56 it eventually gets better. So I'm going to this Yo yo, and I just don't feel good about it. And so I'm a Christian, and I have learned, obviously, that I don't know everything. And so I I prayed about it, and I was like, you just gotta help me through this, Lord, because I'm not getting anywhere. I've felt I learned about Lada, and I just felt confident that I was water. I remember, and at the time, I have a chronic yeast infection in my intestines, so I was going to another doctor for that, and he was looking at the whole thing. He was trying to just figure out why this yeast infection would not get better. Well now we know because it was because my Yeah, he was so, yeah, it was just getting fed constantly with sugar. And so he looked at my dad and and see peptide. And he's like, You don't he says, You sure don't make a lot of insulin. I was like, thank you. I'm trying to tell you know this guy. And he's like, I want to get you on some insulin. He said, I think that's going to help everything. So he put me on Lantis, a real low dose. He was afraid of killing me with Lantis. And again, this is during COVID, so just not a lot of contacts either. Yeah. I mean, everything was on Zoom and getting into other doctors was difficult, and he's like He says, I feel confident that this is going to help you. So I am sitting in front of the grocery store after picking up my Lantis, and my phone rings, and it's the endocrinologist office, and the girl said, I've got some bad news. The PA just left the practice, and you have an appointment next week, and we don't have anybody for you to see. I started cackling like and she, I'm sure she thought I was just the craziest person in the world. And I started cackling. It was like, I believe in prayer. I said I got my answer, because I am not supposed to see him. So she was like, we just don't know what we're going to do. So when we get somebody else, you know, we'll call you and set up an appointment. That was December, and I probably went five months without seeing anybody, which was just fine, I mean, because I wasn't getting good care to begin with, right? I went back to the health department place, and they were like, You need to be seen. And so they did a referral to a big hospital in Reno, which is the next big town, got in there to see the doctor, and he immediately looked at the GAD and the C peptide, and he goes, You're lad. He said, Why are you being treated for type two? And I was like, well, thank you. That's been my question for the last year and a half. Well, it's

Scott Benner 28:46 18 months since you went to that endocrinologist and said, Look at this test. And he said, No, I'm not going to look at it. You'd be dead.

Polly 28:53 Yeah, I don't and so, and it took a doctor, you know, three minutes. Yeah, he kept me on ozempic. He took me off of the Jardiance

Scott Benner 29:03 was the ozempic helping you? Like, did you lose weight? I

Polly 29:06 was losing weight. I would say, overall, it definitely helped. I

Scott Benner 29:11 mean, it must have been helping a little bit with your the resistance as well. I would imagine, like, you're exactly your limited beta cells were probably, you're probably getting more bang for your buck than you would without it

Polly 29:21 exactly. I think that's what it was. He was not convinced that it was helping. And at that time, I didn't need to lose any more weight. I was pretty thin at that time, okay, but he thought it would help with the gut issues, because it was giving me some consistency on on digestion. Okay, so like, right now, I'm not on ozempic, and my digestion is one meal, it might digest in 20 minutes, and another it might be three hours. It's very inconsistent. So that's very frustrating. I

Scott Benner 29:57 don't have diabetes, and I love G. P for how consistent it makes your digestion, it's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, for me, he kept

Polly 30:05 me on that. I saw him in September three years ago. I was pretty good by my a, 1c i think i was like around 6.2 he was pleased. So I was still just doing the low, very low dose of Lantis and those impact. And so I was just kind of rocking along with that. And then Christmas came and went. And between Christmas and New Year's, I could not bring my numbers down. I was constantly at 202 50, I call them, and they sit down. You're over your honeymoon. They put me on a pin, and I started taking that.

Scott Benner 30:50 Here comes the next part. Yeah, wow. What a slow is it? So, I mean, obviously we'll never know, but how interesting would it be to go back to the beginning, go to that emergency room on day one, get that testing, find out you have Lada. And I wonder how well it would have got managed if they knew exactly what it was, and how long it might have strung this out, because you really the reason you're not dead is because your onset was so slow, it was

Polly 31:18 so slow, and my brother in law pontificates that it's because we were on a vegan diet, and so I was very consistent with what I was eating. Were you lower carb? No, it was actually high carb, high carb. It's a it was a very high carb diet, high carb diet. That high

Scott Benner 31:37 carb, high fat thing, low fat, low fat, excuse me, like the mastering diabetes thing, or no, yeah,

Polly 31:44 probably a lot like them. Okay, I'll be honest. I tried. I looked into mastering diabetes for whatever reason, it just didn't click with me. And maybe it was because I was doing this other diet for so long, just the high fruit just really would send me flying. So I just, it just didn't sit well with me, even after the rice diet, but the high fruit of mastering diabetes just didn't make sense to me. Okay, after I got the CGM, I could see, you know, where it would just send me flying, but I know a lot of people do well on it, but it just didn't click with me, with

Scott Benner 32:22 a lot of those different like plans, if you stick to them, they often give you what they they say they're going to and I think where the hiccup is is when people can't stick to them. So yeah, exactly, don't want to, or whatever. How do you find me? So

Polly 32:37 I did what any 21st century person did, did and I got on Facebook, and I looked up lotta there, I found two lotta groups, and one of them was just hardcore low carb, which I just haven't even looked into, that it's just not, it wouldn't fit my life. I'd

Scott Benner 32:58 love to see you jump in there and tell them about your rice diet. I think that'd be awesome. Yeah, they

Polly 33:01 would, their heads would blow up, and then another one, not hardcore, but they definitely leaned towards the low carb. And they would talk about Juicebox, Juicebox Podcast, Juicebox Facebook group. And I'm like, What in the hell is this Juicebox? And I really ignored it, because, I mean no offense. I mean absolutely no offense, because I love the podcast and I love the Facebook group, but it's not, what a stupid name, you know, I'm not going to go look at juice box that must be for kids. And then one day, I was like, Okay, I gotta find out what this juice box, because they were just talking about one of the episodes. I went to the Facebook group and just fell in love with it, because everybody is just so helpful. And

Scott Benner 33:46 the kind place, it is very

Polly 33:49 kind, yeah, very nice people. I kind of left that lot of group behind and went to the Facebook group, and I probably stayed on Facebook group for a good three months before I ever listened to an episode. It was a little bit overwhelming, because there's just so much information. So went to the website, and I saw where you had, you know, different groups of episodes, and that was helpful.

Scott Benner 34:12 I'm glad that's Isabelle. She did that for me. She did a fabulous job. I'm a boy that was very she met me, and she goes, You need to be more organized. And I was like, well, that's not going to happen if you're waiting for me to do it. So yeah, if you'd like to get involved, that'd be wonderful. I get stuck in that spot, like, I don't know what to do. Like, I create, I create content. You know what I mean. So if you make an episode once a week or once a month or something, it's not enough. You don't cover enough details, and you don't cover enough subjects, and if you put it out as fast as it needs to be put out so you can get it all out there, then some people say, Oh my God, I feel overwhelmed. And you're like, I can't win, so I throw it all out there, and I just hope you can find it. And then try to give you some opportunities to find it. Yeah, yeah. It's an imperfect system. Them, but it sounds like you made your way through it about the way we expect, by the way, yeah, get on Facebook. Hear a bunch of people saying, Juicebox Podcast. You're like, What the hell is that? I'll go fine. I'll go look actually, the way I market the podcast is the way I got my wife to marry me. I just put her in a situation. She was like, Oh my God, if you're gonna keep asking that, okay, you know, you hear Juicebox, juice box. You head over, you find the Facebook group. And then it's unavoidable. If you're in that group at any interval, you are gonna see three people a day say this podcast really saved me. And then I guess it's gotta draw you in at some point, right? You know? But, yeah,

Polly 35:36 I mean, it was, I am not a it's just the truth. I'm not a deep thinker. I'm more of a my husband. I believe that to my husband and my children, they all have that engineering brain type thing going on, and I'm the one who just kind of fills in the gaps. So I was listening to podcast, and it was making so much sense to me, my husband and I got in the car, and I was like, You gotta listen to this and tell me if you know I'm understanding this correctly, if you understand it

Scott Benner 36:10 the same way I'm hearing what I'm hearing, right? Yeah, yeah. And

Polly 36:13 so we did, and he probably like, three or four of the bold beginnings that day we were in the car, and he was like, Yeah, that makes perfect sense. He was like, I would have never thought of it, but it makes sense. So it really changed, not drastically, but it changed and kind of put us on a path of management that I think has been very helpful. I'm glad that's excellent, that the digestion thing is, you know, the monkey wrench and everything dealing with that is not easy. I can't Pre Bolus, like other people can. I'm constantly playing catch up because I just don't know when the food is going to hit. So one would say, Well, you know, you know that such and such is going to hit you quickly, and that's not true. There's just no are

Scott Benner 37:02 you on the GLP right now? No, I'm not. Is there a reason why my

Polly 37:06 husband was having some endocrine issues? So we went to he went to an endocrinologist in another one. He got recommended to another one, and we just really liked him. So I started going to him as well. And the endocrinologist is great, but his PA is not. The PA took me off of the ozempic and made wouldn't increase my basal. Just really made a lot of bad choices.

Scott Benner 37:35 I mean, if you take somebody off a GLP, they're going to need more insulin, very likely. Oh yeah,

Polly 37:40 yeah. So now that I'm off of it, the insurance won't pay for it. My doctor did a conference call with the insurance company. They still won't do it. So we're gonna try again in six months, so we'll see that getting

Scott Benner 37:53 off it is horrible, because, like, once you've got the okay, you don't want to make them look over at you again. You know what I mean? Exactly? Yeah? Now, yeah, I've learned that you got it when you had a type two diagnosis, exactly, right? So now they're gonna have to go back and give you a dual diagnosis of type one and insulin resistance, and they're gonna have to call that type two, and then the insurance company's gonna have to accept that there's a dual diagnosis, which is starting to happen, but you're not for sure that it's going to happen, and you're going to need somebody really thoughtful to have those conversations with them and there and that that doctor is going to have to be invested in following through, or you're not going to get anywhere.

Polly 38:33 And he's not right now, right? Because he's not 100% sure that that's the direction we need to go. Have

Scott Benner 38:40 you explained the value behind the digestion and what it was doing for you? Yes,

Polly 38:44 and no, I don't think it has clicked with him. He's just grateful the yeast infection has gotten compared to where I was even six months ago. It is night and day,

Scott Benner 38:58 yeah, but that's apples and oranges, those two things, don't I mean, I see why he thought they were connected originally, but they're not. We've talked

Polly 39:04 about it, and he's just not. There's so much going on, you know, I've got the Hashimotos and the yeast infection and, oh, you

Scott Benner 39:14 have Hashimotos. Where's your TSH, I don't remember.

Polly 39:16 I'm sorry. Don't be sorry. The last time I had it done, he apparently was very good, because he messaged me saying, This is amazing. We're making progress. And so it was good. Keep pushing till you get it under two, if you can, now that you mentioned a number, I think it was four, yeah, keep

Scott Benner 39:34 pushing it under two. You'll you'll see a reduction in symptoms. I would imagine, if you can get it under two what symptoms of Hashimotos Do you currently have? Well,

Polly 39:45 lately I really have, other than being tired, and you know, the typical stuff, lately, I've been having my throat kind of close up, which is not happy. Hmm, making me happy. That's a new thing. Like, within the last five or six weeks, what's your dose? You know, is it point eight? Eight? No, I want to say point two, five. It's pretty low. Yeah, it

Scott Benner 40:12 should probably be. I mean, this is a good time for me to say probably. I'm not a doctor, and I barely got through high school, but I would think that given like I saw you for a split second when we first started talking. And I don't know your weight or I'm not guessing it, but I don't see how point two five, if point two five is keeping you in the fours, that seems like a low amount. I would think you could handle more

Polly 40:34 from hearing other people talk on the podcast and on the Facebook group. I thought it was low.

Scott Benner 40:40 Yeah, there's a lot of things they could do. They could even just giving you one extra pill, like a month. Sometimes you'd be surprised how good doctors like work through it, but just push for under two, and that'll help. But that's and it could help your digestion a little. I mean, digestion is, I mean, your thyroid does help with digestion, yeah, but it's not crazy to think that you could get some benefit from that. And if, if he wants to go the route of no GLP, I want to handle it through getting your TSH, right, well, then that's fine, but then adjust my TSH, yeah, yeah. And don't take me off a GLP, and then don't adjust my insulin. That's insane. We

Polly 41:19 are, you know, obviously watching the insulin, but I mostly take a Fresa so I can get on it quickly when it does start going up, because since I can't Pre Bolus, oh, that's cool, and I can't do a pump, so it's been very, very helpful up until my last A, 1c which was about six weeks ago. I was 5.40 wonderful, yeah. So between the Fresa and I am a big fan of the sugar pixel on my desk. I know where I stand. And so I can, you know, I can jump on it pretty quickly when the food does start digesting. Yeah. So that's been really nice. And so Mr. My new pa that took me off the ozempic. He left the practice. So once again, I've gotten rid of another PA. You'll like this. Another pa story. So I am prone to UTIs, and I knew I had a UTI, and nobody would do the flipping test, you know, to tell me I had one. One day I knew I just had this raging UTI, and I was at 280 and it took 22 units to bring me down to 150 and I have never taken that much insulin in my life. That's the infection, right? Exactly, yeah. So coincidentally, the hospital called to do an appointment for a test. I was so upset over this high blood sugar that would not move and all this insulin I was taking, I was sure I was killing myself, you know. So this poor girl in the Scheduling Office, Dr so and so could care less if I was laying flat on the floor, and I told her what was going on. She was like, well, that's just not right. And I was like, Well, I can tell you, it's not right, but that's where my life is right now. And she was like, well, we're going to fix that. And I mean, God bless her, I would say, 20 minutes later, I get a call from from the doctor, the MD, and he said, what's going on? And I told him, he's like, he's like, Well, there's a lot going on there. He was like, You should be on more than eight units of basal. He was like, that's just not doing any good. And so he said, We gotta fix this basal. And he said, We gotta fix this UTI. And I was like, Well, yeah, you know, thank you. I would say that was kind of a turning point that was about, that was probably about four months ago, and so we got the basal worked out, and we got the UTI worked out. So I've been flying high since you're getting better,

Scott Benner 44:11 yeah. I mean, it's moving on. It's just so slow for you. Like, it shouldn't take this long to get these things straight. It's just, I mean, do you have a feeling after having been through all this. Like, are there? I know you said you're not the you're not the engineering thinker in your family, but what could have happened to you? I don't usually ask him fistic questions like this, but along the way, I mean, you must have been thinking about this forever. Like, along the way, what would have helped you? Like, What would people need to have done in certain situations that would have been really valuable for you. The gut

Polly 44:43 issues, like I said, just throw a monkey wrench into everything, because, number one, it just makes, makes me feel so bad, and then add public sugars and all that to it. I really don't know, honestly, because you. We are trained to trust doctors, to trust the medical establishment. I've just gotten such bad advice. Yeah,

Scott Benner 45:08 so where have they let you down? Like, looking back now? Like, are there moments where you're like, I was told this and I or have we gone over all of them? Or I'm just trying to figure out if, like, if I'm a doctor, I'm listening to this like, you know, it's gonna be easy to hear this and go, Oh, this is the problem. You know, we're all fractured. There's one doctor does this and one does that, and you've gotta get references and referrals and insurance, and not everybody knows what's happening. And, like, I get all the arguments. But what fixes that for you? Yeah,

Polly 45:35 I don't know. I guess just, you know, I gotta go back to my brother in law, him thinking out about out of the box, you know, what neurologist thinks about, you know, type one. He that's not it shouldn't

Scott Benner 45:50 be out of the box. Thinking it's an out of the box thinking for a neurologist, but not for an end, and not for an endo. Your endo was, like, literally, 100% wrong when you face them.

Polly 46:01 I really can't say, you know, I mean, I guess just, it's shocking, the number of people on, you know, your podcast that are misdiagnosed, it's the norm. It's

Scott Benner 46:13 funny because, can I say, Polly, that people like I'll hear from doctors like you have a lot of episodes where people are being negative about their doctors, and I want to say to them, like, do you think this was my goal? Like, do you think I started up a podcast, and I thought to myself, like, I'll have a lot of conversations about how doctors let people down. I never thought that mine, you know, oddly enough, my doctors were, you know, for Arden, were okay. Like, they weren't great, but I was masking so much of it, I didn't know if they were good or bad to begin with. Like, I wouldn't have known. But if you would have come from my personal experience, I would have been like, oh, the doctors are fine. It's not till they start talking to all like, these two are the people who are reaching out, you know what I mean? Like, and other people who have good doctors hear these episodes, and sometimes they reach out. But if you're listening to this, you're like, Wow, this podcast has a lot of conversations about how doctors are, you know, not doing a good job. Like, this podcast is a problem. Like, I'm not the problem. I'm just, people are just coming on and telling us I didn't know what the hell Polly was gonna say before she got here today. Like, seriously, you know, like, do a better job. Like, I don't know what you want from me as a whole. Like, you know, as a profession,

Polly 47:19 the only thing I can think of, there's just such a prevalence of type two that that's just top of mind. I used to, I think you were too. I was in advertising for a while, you know, and you talk about top of mind awareness, and I think that just type two is what everybody's thinking about type one is, and definitely Lada is, you know, just So way back in everyone's mind that it just falls by the wayside. That shouldn't be the case. Yeah, you know, bodies break down. So, you know, type one is gonna, I mean,

Scott Benner 47:59 it's not like there's a million possibilities for what was wrong with you. You had type one or type two. Like, it's not like they had two choices. There were two choices. Like, why don't we go crazy and pay attention to both of them? I don't know. Like, it just it seems so ridiculous that they can't and listen. I've also had conversations with doctors that, at the end of them, they sway me. And I'm like, All right, well, I see how this happens. And, you know, like, I could probably talk to your doctors and they might say stuff, like, I don't know, Polly's non committal. She's, you know, like, said something and she went with me, or, like, whatever. Like, she didn't fight me, so I thought she didn't, I don't know what they would say, you know, but I'm frustrated by this conversation over and over again. And I think it's possible people think I'm frustrated about diabetes. I'm frustrated about people. Like, that's that's my concern. Like, you think this is about diabetes. It's not. This is about everything. And then, you know, the the example people use all the time, like, you know, 15 years ago, people used to love to say, like, these computers are ruined everything. I went to a cash register and my cashier didn't know what my change was, and people would use that as an example of like society not being able to make decisions about stuff or understanding things well enough to even do their own jobs. But I do think that as automated as everything is getting, it's good. I do think it's good, but at the same time, we're not absolutely, yeah, we're not there yet, and we still need people to think. And I think a lot of people have given up on the thinking part. They're like, Oh, the process takes care of it, or someone in another department does that. I had a conversation this morning. It's nothing to get like, it's not a big that was talking to an advertiser, and they were like, oh, yeah, we got to get that set up. I have to move that to this person. And I'm like, you don't know how to do that part. Like, wow. Like, this is segmented. You know what I mean? Like the guy you hear about siloing, you know what I mean, that's a professional term that, right? But they say that the reason these organizations are so like, organizations. In general are so inept is because everyone's siloed, meaning that they're stuck in this one knowledge spot within the company. They know how to do one thing, and if you ask them to think about the silo next to them, not only can they not think about it, they don't even know what's in that silo. They just like they just know that when I hear that word, bill gets the email, that's it. Nobody understands anything. And now, okay, if it's in advertising, but when it's a physician like Jesus, that's frightening. I was watching something I don't remember what the hell it was, and the host was talking, this is not a show that usually talks about medicine. And the host started talking about, if you think your doctor knows best, you better be careful, check for yourself and and then he used the word, and then he goes, you can have to be your own best advocate. And I was like, Oh, now the wait that got outside of conversations around, like, health stuff, like, now other people are aware of this, so it's into the mainstream. Now, like, you think I'm like, You think I'm talking about wait till the mainstream who doesn't have any compassion for how hard it is to be a doctor or how difficult it is to figure things out, like wait till they get a hold of the fact that people are going to you and getting misdiagnosed for five years, then you're really gonna, you're gonna think you're gonna run back to me and say, Oh, Scott was nice. So I don't know, Polly, the whole thing just, I've been frustrated by it for years, you know, so it's hard for me to talk about without getting upset sometimes. Yeah, anyway, I'm sorry. Was there anything else you want to talk

Polly 51:32 about? I just think it's more manageable now, and I hate it, you know? I was just, I was just telling my husband we were we went to some kind of meeting a couple weeks ago, and they were serving these fruit nectar juices, and they're really tasty. And, you know, I used to drink them when I was a kid. And I said, you know, I can't even think about drinking something like that, because it would just send me sky high. And I said, you know, I have to think about that. I can't just have a juice, you know, yeah, like a normal person,

Scott Benner 52:08 you're not looking to drink a gallon of juice a day, but like you're at a thing, and there's a cup of something there and you feel reminiscent about it, you'd like to be able to take a couple of sips.

Polly 52:16 Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I said, I have to think about, you know, juice. You know, who thinks about juice? And I've never been a juice drinker, but, you know, if I wanted it, I would like to be able to drink it, but I can't. And so that that kind of stuff is frustrating. Listen,

Scott Benner 52:34 my only my daughter has diabetes, and we were away somewhere and someone had lemonade. I love lemonade, right? But this was, like, full on sugar made from lemons, lemonade. And I got a glass of it, and I got about halfway through it, and I thought, oh, I should

Polly 52:49 stop drinking this. Yeah, my husband's the same way, yeah. So I just put it down. He loves, like, that lemonade slushy stuff, and he'll drink, you know, maybe two sips of it, and he's like, my eyes are fuzzy because of the sugar. You know,

Scott Benner 53:04 we all live like, well, not everybody, but like, I limit sugar pretty significantly for me. And yeah, you have a little bit. And you're like, you're like, oh my god, is this what cocaine is like? Meanwhile, people who have done cocaine are like, no,

Polly 53:19 but we're all cheap drunks. But yeah, yeah, exactly.

Scott Benner 53:23 I would be a very, very cheap date, for sure. I'd be like, I'd have a half a beer and I'd be buzzing around. So, yeah, anyway, but I take your point, like, it's just it sucks. It's not something you want to be doing. Just because you're doing well at it doesn't mean it's fun, that's for sure. Yeah,

Polly 53:38 you know, when you add all of it, the Hashimotos and the diabetes and the gut thing, and I know you're a big advocate for glps right now, and I do see now that I'm off of it, I can see that there's a lot less consistency because that which is interesting. You know, I don't know enough about it. You've probably studied it a lot more than I have, but it just seems to be a lot less consistent right now than

Scott Benner 54:07 study is a strong word, Polly, but I am trying to pay attention to it, because I really believe, after what I've saw with Arden, I'm like, Man, this is really something like, there's a lot here to be learned. You know, Arden was at at the lowest dose of Manjaro, two and a quarter. What is the lowest dose of Manjaro? Hold on a second. I should probably also learn how to pronounce it at some point. But I honestly don't care Manjaro, but 2.5 milligrams, right? Is the start. Is the starting lowest dose. That's all. Arden was using 2.5 a week. But she got to the point where she was, we were like, uh, you look too thin. So how do you balance all the value you're getting, insulin use, insulin sensitivity, you know, her acne cleared up, like, all this stuff, like, right? Like, there's a lot going on here that is clear about it to me, is clear it's impacting insulin resistance. And, you know, probably a 10. 20% reduction in her insulin use. But she's like, that. I'm like, I'm never hungry, and so she's making herself eat. And you know, she's like, I, you know, I'd like to be hungry once in a while. I'm like, yeah, right on. Like, I'm not looking for you to, like, lose she lost some weight, which was fine, but then she lost some more, and we were like, oh. And she got to the point where we were like, you gotta put like, seven pounds on here. And so we got the weight back on her, which wasn't hard, but we did it by taking her just off the mantra no for a week or two or for a month, and she put the weight back on and but Jesus, like her insulin needs went crazy again. And I was like, All right, so now we're dosing it. By the way, sometimes I say stuff on here. I'm like, I don't know if I don't know if I should be saying this or not, but I'm not a doctor. This isn't advice. You shouldn't be doing this, etc and so on. Use drugs the way they're meant to be used. We're injecting the pen into a new, clean vial and then drawing it out with an insulin needle. And we started by giving her half of it. So if she was 2.5 it's what, 1.25 and that wasn't enough and that, but that was basically about 15 units in an insulin pen. So this week, I texted her and I said, hey, when you inject the Manjaro this week, do 18 units like we're gonna move up slowly, and because we're trying to find the balance between impact on her insulin stability, for her digestion and for her blood sugars, and still being able to eat. And I we're very hopeful we're going to find it. I see the difference this week, and I think next week we'll move up a little more and then find that balance between being able to eat and getting the good impacts for the rest of the stuff. So my expectation is, once it gets wider used by type ones, they're going to have to put it into a vial and then let you talk to your doctor about dosing, instead of just saying, like, here's the because these are all set up for here's your starter dose, here's your move up, your move up, your move up. And we got to get you up to this big dose in order for it to really work for you, if you're really trying to lose a lot of weight and everything, but what if you're not trying to lose a lot of weight? There's still a ton of like value here. Anyway, I just went on for a while, but that's what I think about it at

Polly 57:11 the moment. It didn't affect my appetite. It didn't completely take my appetite away, but at four o'clock, it was as if a switch was turned on turned off, and the thought of food was the last thing on my mind. And so from like four to like 10 o'clock the next morning, I would not want to eat. It was the craziest thing. Oh,

Scott Benner 57:38 it hit you times a day. That's interesting. Yeah, it was crazy. Today is my injection day, and I don't have the I have to go to the pharmacy today to pick it up, right? And I woke up this morning and I was standing in here, like, like, planning my day out. And I was like, Man, am I hungry. Like, I haven't felt hungry like this. And I was like, oh, in about a week, it's really crazy how it hits different people different ways the injection

Polly 58:02 day. Yes, I would be hungry on the injection day. Yeah, it was. It was crazy, well, but which makes sense?

Scott Benner 58:11 Yeah, I know more and more people, they're calling it micro dosing, but they're they're basically finding their own dose of it, and it's gonna get popular, like people are gonna have success with it, and start talking about it, and then it's gonna, it's gonna make its way out. I know some people are shooting tiny bits of it every day. Some people are doing what we're doing with Arden, which is once a week, but less, like, you know, it's gonna find its footing. And then, you know, I tried

Polly 58:34 the the smaller amounts, like two or three times a week, and it didn't make a huge difference, not enough of an impact. Yeah, it wasn't worth the

Scott Benner 58:44 effort. Well, for Arden, Arden's like, I'm not injecting every day, just so, you know. And I was like, okay, like, she's like, that's just not happening. So I was like, gotcha. So that's why we're, we're trying to find a balance here. And I don't, I don't know, like, I've just, all I can tell you is it's not for everybody. Or some people are gonna have like side effects that they're just gonna be like, this isn't worth it to me, or they just can't do it. But you're gonna hear about more and more people who are finding value with it too. So we'll see what happens. What else? Anything else are we good? I think that's enough. Done it. Yeah, Polly, I love that attitude. I think that's enough. I like how earlier you said I'm Christian, so I know I don't know everything. And I thought, I'm not Christian. I don't I know too. How did she find out? Can I ask one question, though, before we go, sure if your family's brains work in like an engineering way, how do you describe how yours works all

Polly 59:41 over the place, just, I see everything, not but not details. I'm not a detail person. Big picture.

Scott Benner 59:51 You see big picture. Stuff, really big picture. Yeah, you know how things impacted something else, but you don't like you see that it impacts it. You know for sure. Or it does, but you're not sure the mechanism. It just does, yeah, yeah, artistic, are you artistic? I'm not particularly,

Polly 1:00:08 I've been told I have artistic brain, but I'm not an artistic person, like I like to cook and make things. Make, yeah, not really, but I mean cooking is probably, cooking is probably my thing. Cooking is probably my outlet. You know,

Scott Benner 1:00:24 Paul, you have no you have no ego. When you're talking about yourself. It's very nice.

Polly 1:00:30 Well, I don't, it doesn't do any good. You're just like,

Scott Benner 1:00:33 I don't know anything about that. Some people would be like, Oh no, I've, you know what? No, not really. It's excellent. Now, how many kids do you have? Two? Do they have any auto immune issues? I

Polly 1:00:46 think my daughter does. We had her thyroid tested because she was just sick right after she started college. Two years ago, she was just exhausted, and so that was my first thought. But it came back No. I mean, not even close to problem my son. We did the type one test for him, and he came back clear.

Scott Benner 1:01:10 Okay. Does your daughter have any of your digestion issues? No, no, okay.

Polly 1:01:15 My endocrinologist is pretty convinced this was an acquired thing that, and then the high blood sugars fed it that, somehow I got this yeast infection, and then the sugar just fed it for so long, I meant

Scott Benner 1:01:32 more about the speed of your digestion, because, is that possible? She's not picking up nutrients. Maybe

Polly 1:01:38 we had that thought, but she's, I think she had just run herself down. Both my kids were home schooled, and we did a dual enrollment program at a community college, and so she was pretty young, and she was taking college classes, and she got involved in student government and all of that. I think she was just running herself, ragging the

Scott Benner 1:02:00 candle at both ends. Yeah,

Polly 1:02:01 yep, absolutely, gotcha. So she's doing much better as far as energy and all that. So I don't think it's that. My gut tells me it's not a health issue. So our daughters are the same age. Then Arden's 20. Mine just turned 1818, oh, oh,

Scott Benner 1:02:19 but she's in college two years. Yep, she started when she was 15, and I think that I didn't account for Okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, interesting. Okay. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this and adding your voice to the podcast. It's been fantastic getting to know you. I really do appreciate your time. Thank you. Oh,

Polly 1:02:38 thank you. Thanks for all you do. Oh, that's nice.

Scott Benner 1:02:41 You're welcome. Would this go the way you expected?

Polly 1:02:45 Yeah, good. Pretty much. You're You're good at what you do. Thank

Scott Benner 1:02:49 you. Yeah, you are. I know I am. I just, I tried to sound humble. It didn't work. I'm just teasing now. I'm just being funny. And I know people like he's not being funny, he I know I'm pretty good at this, but I've gotten a lot better at it over time, which makes me think there's another ceiling that I'm just not aware of. So I'm trying to keep I'm trying to keep going and getting better at it. So we'll see doing my best here. So I appreciate you very much. Hold on one second for me. Okay, a huge thanks to Omnipod, not just my longest sponsor, but my first one. Omnipod.com/juicebox if you love the podcast and you love tubeless insulin pumps, this link is for you. Omnipod.com/juice, box. Dexcom sponsored this episode of the juice box podcast. Learn more about the Dexcom g7 at my link. Dexcom.com/juice, box. Earlier you heard me talking about blue circle health, the free virtual type one diabetes care, education and support program for adults. And I know it sounds too good to be true, but I swear it's real. Thanks to funding from a big T 1d philanthropy group, blue circle health doesn't bill your insurance or charge you a cent. In other words, it's free. They can help you with things like carb counting, insurance navigation, diabetes technology, insulin adjustments, peer support, Prescription Assistance and much more. So, if you're tired of waiting nine months to get in with your endo or your educator, you can get an appointment with their team within one to two weeks. This program is showing what T 1d care can and should look like. Blue circle health is currently available in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. If you live in one of those states, go to blue circle health.org to sign up today. The link is in the show notes, and please help me to spread the word blue circle health had to buy an ad because people don't believe that it's free, but it is. They're trying to give you free care if you live in four. Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. It's ready to go right now. And like I said, they're adding states so quickly in 2025 that you want to follow them on social media at Blue circle health, and you can also keep checking bluecircle health.org to see when your free care is available to you. 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.

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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 00:00 Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Chanel 00:14 My name is Chanel. Two of our kids were diagnosed with type one in 2022 our daughter, Cate, was diagnosed first when she was four and a half, and she is seven. Now, our son was diagnosed 85 days later, just two days after his seventh birthday.

Scott Benner 00:33 Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but blue circle health is a non profit that's offering a totally free virtual type one diabetes clinical care education and support program for adults 18 and up. You heard me right free. No strings attached, just free. Currently, if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama or Missouri, you're eligible for blue circle health right now, but they are adding states quickly in 2025 so make sure to follow them at Blue circle health on social media and make yourself familiar with blue circle health.org, blue circle health is free. It is without cost. There are no strings attached. I am not hiding anything from you. Blue circle health.org, you know why they had to buy an ad. No one believes it's free. 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 friends touched by type one's walk is coming up quickly on March 8. That's a Saturday at Lake Eola Park in Orlando, Florida. Go now to touched by type one to sign up and register. It's completely free. You're gonna have a wonderful time touched by type one.org Go to the Programs tab, click on Steps to a cure.

Chanel 02:15 Hi. My name is Chanel. I have been married for 15 years. My husband and I have five kids. Two of our kids were diagnosed with type one in 2022 our daughter, Cate, was diagnosed first when she was four and a half, and she is seven. Now, our son was diagnosed 85 days later, just just two days after his seventh

Scott Benner 02:42 birthday. How old are your kids? Top to bottom,

Chanel 02:45 my oldest is 11, so I have 11, 975, and three. Wow. Will

Scott Benner 02:53 there be more?

Chanel 02:54 I don't think so. No more planned. Don't think so. How old are you? I am 36

Scott Benner 02:59 so listen, you're 36 you've got five kids, two of them have type one diabetes. In earlier, you asked me if we talk about locations, like, I should stay vague, right? Like, I could say I live just in Utah. So Mormon, you're Mormon, yes. I mean, if you weren't, I'd be like, Wow, what a coincidence.

Chanel 03:18 No, I am. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints. Thank

Scott Benner 03:23 you. And I, and I never remember how to say it exactly right, which is why I say Mormon, because I'm not sure. And we haven't had an opportunity to say this recently on the podcast, and that my friends are in Utah are letting me down. But I am huge. This podcast is huge in the church, is it not?

Chanel 03:38 I have heard you say that it is lovely. Okay,

Scott Benner 03:42 I would like to be bigger in a couple of other churches too, maybe one day to get outside of Utah, would be nice. Okay, so, do you have any autoimmune in your family besides your children? Yes,

Chanel 03:54 my father in law has Crohn's disease. My mom has crest syndrome. Okay, so that one's pretty rare. I think I've only heard it mentioned on here once or twice, but she has that. And then my sister has Graves disease. Graves. Anything for you? Nothing for me. I take a thyroid pill, but there's nothing like diagnosed or anything.

Scott Benner 04:23 Well, you but you have hypothyroidism, I do, but you haven't gotten tested to see if it's Hashimotos. Yeah,

Chanel 04:29 they've never told me that. They've never told me it is, it just

Scott Benner 04:34 snow. You want to go out on a limb and say it probably is, because I'm willing to do that. It's possible. Yeah. What is it? The thing your mom has this here,

Chanel 04:42 crest crest syndrome.

Scott Benner 04:46 I So you're saying you've heard about that on here.

Chanel 04:50 I've heard about it. I know once for sure, like scler Derma

Scott Benner 04:56 press syndrome is a sub type of scar DOMA, a chronic auto. Immune disease that causes hardening and tightening of the skin and connective tissue. People have talked about this on here. Okay, crest stands for the five primary features of the condition calcinosis, Raynaud's phenomenon, esophageal dysmo, motility. Oh, that sounds not good. What is sclerodactyly?

Chanel 05:20 I'm not sure that that woman has come up with my mom, yet tight, thick

Scott Benner 05:24 in skin on the fingers and toes and, oh, my god, telecy, what the hell

Chanel 05:30 that's why we just call it crest because, yeah, no

Scott Benner 05:34 small red spots on the skin caused by widening blood vessels. How about that? Yeah, and it's considered a milder form of systematic sclerosis. How about that? Okay, I was gonna say, Cool. I don't know why. Sorry. I apologize. I was almost like, I think I just meant, let's move on. Okay, so there's auto immune happening.

Chanel 05:53 There's one other thing. When we were about a year into my kids being diagnosed, we found out that my husband's uncle is type one. Nobody really knew that to tell us when we were trying to figure out with our kids what was going on. There's him. And then my husband's grandma had a brother who died in his early 20s, and they think that he was probably type one as well. Oh, there's a fair amount then. So there's, there's lots of stuff going on, yeah, and on both sides too. So, Mm, hmm, gotcha things that we never knew until, yeah, until all this hit

Scott Benner 06:32 and so, and your daughter was first. You said she was four, yes. How did it present?

Chanel 06:38 I kind of feel like a crazy person when I tell the story, but I did not know anything about diabetes, like nothing. My dad's type two, but yes, I didn't even know there were different types. I didn't know anything. Yeah. So one night, everything was normal. I went to bed. My baby was six months old at the time, and I had a dream, and in my dream, Kate, that's my daughter. Kate, had diabetes, and I wasn't doing anything about it. In my dream, I just knew that she had it, and then it was just a list of symptoms, I guess, a list of words going through my head all night, really,

Scott Benner 07:22 that's insane. I had a dream a few minutes ago that I had to pee, and when I woke up I actually had to pee, but that that's not the same that's not the same thing. Wait, so you're having a dream that's telling you your kid has diabetes. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 and just as the name says, it lasts for a full year, imagine for a second a CGM with just one sensor placement and one warm up period every year. Imagine a sensor that has exceptional accuracy over that year and is actually the most accurate CGM in the low range that you can get. What if I told you that this sensor had no risk of falling off or being knocked off? That may seem too good to be true, but I'm not even done telling you about it, yet, the Eversense 365 has essentially no compression lows. It features incredibly gentle adhesive for its transmitter. You can take the transmitter off when you don't want to wear your CGM and put it right back on without having to waste a sensor or go through another warm up period. The app works with iOS and Android, even Apple Watch. You can manage your diabetes instead of your CGM with the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM,

Chanel 08:43 yes, this is why I feel like a crazy person when I tell the story. But it was just the things going through my head, constant, snacking, fatigue, thirsty, frequent urination, blurry vision, like just over and over these things. And so my baby woke up in the night and I went to feed him, and I was like, Well, this is the weirdest dream I've ever had. I don't know what's happening. So while I'm feeding my baby, I'm just Googling some things, and I'm like, type one, type one diabetes. I don't even know what that is, but that's interesting, because in my dream, Kate had diabetes,

Scott Benner 09:23 and so you're freaking me out. You know, hold on a second. No, I know. I know, prior to falling asleep that night, were you noticing that she was sick? Did you see symptoms anything like that? No,

Chanel 09:35 no. And so looking back, she was thirsty, but she had just gotten a new water bottle for Christmas that she was really excited about. So

Scott Benner 09:46 yeah, I hear you. I'm just trying to decide, like, Were you on the scent of this subconsciously, and then you went to sleep, and things you know, and that you didn't even know you knew, kind of popped into your consciousness or but you don't think that. What happened? I

Chanel 10:00 don't think so. It was just a regular day, regular everything was fine. I woke up to feed my baby, googled the things, saw the diabetes stuff, and then went back to bed, and the dream started again, just the same thing, replaying through my head all night, and

Scott Benner 10:19 you couldn't stop it, even when you were saying to yourself, lottery numbers, lottery numbers, go back to nothing like that.

Chanel 10:26 I wish that worked. It just kept going, and I didn't it was it was just really weird. No

Scott Benner 10:33 kidding. Okay, so you wake up, you think you're crazy, or you look into it. I

Chanel 10:38 didn't think too much of it, but I kind of couldn't just shake the filling. I told my husband while he's getting ready to work, like I had the weirdest dream. This is what happened. This is what it was. And he's like, Well, good thing. That was just a dream. And then he went off to work, and I was here with the kids. Took my two oldest people to school, and then we went to Walmart, and I was printing pictures of the baby for Grandma, you know, and I'm sitting there at the computer in Walmart waiting for the pictures to print, and I turn and I look over, and Kate was just sitting in the big part of the cart, and kind of had her arm up on the edge, and kind of leaning her head on the arm, she looked really pale. And I asked if she was okay, okay? And she said, not really. I'm hungry and I'm really thirsty and I need to potty. And then she took her classes off, and she said, Are these dirty? Because everything looks blurry. Wow.

Scott Benner 11:40 And you were like, This is just like, the drink. Did you think?

Chanel 11:44 Yeah, I just like, Oh crap. And I just stared at her for a minute,

Scott Benner 11:49 and then you said, Honey, what are the lottery numbers? Go slow. Go slow. Five. Then what?

Chanel 11:54 Yeah, right. And so I was like, Well, okay, let's go to the bathroom and get a drink, and I got this fruit snack in my purse. I can give you that, I guess. I mean, I didn't, yeah, I didn't know anything. And so I'm trying to take care of all these things that she said she needed, and while she's in the bathroom, I'm really lucky. I have a pediatrician who will text me. I just sent him a quick text. I didn't tell him I was a crazy mom who had a dream.

Scott Benner 12:25 I bet you left that out. These are some

Chanel 12:27 things I've noticed. He texted right? And I said, Can this wait for her well child check, or is this something I need to make an appointment for? And he texted back and said, Can you be here in 15 minutes? And then he's like, Oh yeah,

Scott Benner 12:43 if any halfway decent doctor would have heard, you know, frequent urination, the blurry vision really pushes it over the edge too, I think,

Chanel 12:52 yeah, and I don't know if her glasses were just dirty. I mean, she was four, they were always dirty. But just that, she said that,

Scott Benner 13:01 well, in the dream where her glass is dirty or would she it was just words. It's just words

Chanel 13:06 going through my head

Scott Benner 13:08 being serious. Have you had any other meaningful dreams that have resonated in real life? I

Chanel 13:16 have had some cool things happen before, but nothing that was quite like this. All right, we're

Scott Benner 13:23 gonna, I'm gonna ask you about that at the end of the episode. I want to hear what else has happened in your dreams. Okay, I mean, does this put you in a bit of a panic? Can you be here in 15 minutes? Yeah,

Chanel 13:32 totally. And so I was like, Okay, I I'm coming. So pack up these three little kids. Drive straight to the doctor. We go in, and he's like, this looks like diabetes. He said, We're gonna test her urine, I'm gonna do a finger poke, and I'm gonna send you over for a blood draw. And I was like,

Scott Benner 13:54 what? Yeah, How old's your baby at that point? Six months oh, she have a six month old. You have your daughter, and there's another one with you, right? Only two kids,

Chanel 14:02 yeah, there's there's one in between there, right? So four year old, two year old baby, and so I kind of was just sitting there, and everything was just surreal, I guess, like slow motion. Did this? That did the urine test. There was sugar, showed sugar in it. Her finger poke was only 256 but, like, I didn't even know what that meant when he told me what her number was, and so he was like, well, you're gonna go over across the parking lot, get this blood draw and then plan on going down to the Children's Hospital. Wow,

Scott Benner 14:38 hey, did you call your husband and go? I told you that our

Chanel 14:45 size like, she has been using the bathroom a lot, but like, maybe she has some sort of infection, like she hadn't been potty trained for that long, and so I was kind of, maybe I'll take her to the doctor and we'll find out she's got, like. Of what UTI or something, I'm not sure. And so I was kind of texting him, and he's like, well, hopefully that's not what it is. Just go get the blood draw. Let's see. And so I was like, Okay. And at that point, I was I told my doctor. I was like, This is too crazy. Like, this doesn't happen. And I at that point, I told him about my dream, did you really? I did. And I was like, I dreamt about this last night, and these were the symptoms, and this is what happened. And he was just kind of staring at me, like, what?

Scott Benner 15:34 And at the end of the dream, you said you felt so bad for me that this visit was going to be free. They just stare until he talks again,

Chanel 15:45 and he was like, you know, this is why I always trust a mom's gut. If a mom has a gut feeling that something's off with one of her kids, it doesn't hurt me at all to run the test so I can run the test, even if it's just to make the mom feel better. So if a mom thinks something's up, something usually is and and I was like, Well, okay, so I just felt kind of weird. I dragged these three kids across the parking lot to go to this other building where we were supposed to get the blood draw he had sent me with the paperwork to the paper to show them what they needed to do. And the lady over there was so mean. She like, I don't even know I'm I'm there with these three little kids. I'm kind of in shock, and don't really know what's happening. Um, it was just supposed to be a quick trip to Walmart, you know. And this lady grabs the paper, looks at it, and then she's just so irritated and angry, and she's like, there is no reason they should be having me do this to a child. And so at that point, Kate's scared. She doesn't know what's happening either. The Lady grabs her arm. Isn't gentle with her at all. Kate starts crying, and the lady just yells at the four year old, like, you need to hold still and shut up and let me do this. And what was she

Scott Benner 17:14 doing? She's doing a blood draw.

Chanel 17:15 Yeah, she's doing a blood draw. And I was just,

Scott Benner 17:21 that's bizarre, that's weirder than your dream. I was

Chanel 17:25 like, can you just give us a minute? She's scared. I'm scared. We don't know what's happening. Yeah, you're

Scott Benner 17:30 kind of a bitch. So like, let's maybe you're polite. You're like, give us a minute. What you mean is, maybe you should take a minute, like, and get away from everything for a second. Did you let her do it? Or did you ask for someone else?

Chanel 17:43 And she was like, Well, I have to get this done, and it's not gonna work if she can't hold still. And she had someone come in, and Kate was sitting on my lap, and this lady just grabbed her arm, pulled it straight, and just jabbed a needle in there and got the blood draw, and I was so angry, like, if that would have happened now, I would have handled it differently, but I was in shock and I was scared and I didn't know what was going on. Yeah, my whole world was being flipped upside down.

Scott Benner 18:15 Are you different now, or do you just, do you mean just now, like when you weren't in that

Chanel 18:20 situation? No, I would have been more vocal about it now, yeah, because

Scott Benner 18:24 you've been through some stuff now, and you because,

Chanel 18:28 yeah, because I've been through some stuff, and I've had to advocate for my kids, and I've had to to teach people things. And, yeah, you know, yeah, I understand. I've just been through the things now,

Scott Benner 18:40 so after Cruella gets the blood out, by the way, I'm gonna It's the strangest thing, this is gonna seem like a left turn for a second, but you said I drug those three kids across the parking lot, and I swear to you, you almost the next thing you heard from me was almost me crying, because I has popped in my head, but I I remember taking my mom to her oncology appointment to see if this oncologist would do surgery on her, and then after he agreed, we had to go across the parking lot for blood work. And my mom was in a in a wheelchair at that point because she was so sick. And I swear to you, it took me right back to that spot, and I was so, like, I was so happy you were talking and filling the space, because I couldn't think for a minute so interesting how it like those words, like I drug them across the parking lot and we were talking about a medical thing, and it took me like, I felt like I was standing there for a second. I'm okay now, by the way, because the story about the horrible nurse, like, snap me right out of it. But, but anyway, I just, I thought I would share that, like it just, it really took me to another place. I'm sorry. Go ahead, I apologize. No, that's great, great, great, great that my mom had cancer or great that I started. No, okay, good.

Chanel 19:57 Yeah. So I. We got the blood jaw, they sent us back over to the pediatrician. He kind of just said, go, go down to the Children's Hospital. Pack a bag. I'll let him know you're coming. And so I didn't really know that I was supposed to go right then. So I kind of went

Scott Benner 20:19 back to Walmart to pick up your pictures. I God, if you did, don't tell me. I don't think it sounds good, if that's what

Chanel 20:29 happened. No, I didn't do that, but I went home and I was kind of trying to wrap my head around things. I was trying to Google some stuff. I was talking to my husband. My mom lives a couple hours away, so I was trying to get her to come up to take care of my other kids. I was just trying to get things figured out. So some time passes, the doctor calls me and he's like, Hey, Chenille, I got a call from them. They told me, You're not. There is everything okay? And I was like, Well, I'm waiting for my mom to get here. We'll go after my husband gets off work and I pick up the kids from school, and he's like, no, no, no, you need to go. You need to put Kate in the car, and you need to get down there. Yeah, they're expecting you. And I was like, oh, because somewhere in my head he hadn't actually said, this is type one diabetes. He said, This looks like type one, right? And so I guess I kind of thought we were going down there for more tests, and I didn't know that it was an urgent thing that we needed to to get down there quicker. Yeah,

Scott Benner 21:32 this moment. Do you think of this as the the first big, like, life changing event that had happened in your family, or had other stuff happen prior to this?

Chanel 21:42 No, this was the this was the biggest thing. The first big thing

Scott Benner 21:46 levels up your perspective pretty quickly. Yeah,

Chanel 21:49 for sure. Yeah. The hospital called me and they were like, are you coming? What's what's going on? And I was like, Well, I'm trying to figure out what to do with my baby. He was breastfeeding at the time, so can he come with me? And no, no, no, absolutely not. They still had COVID rules. They said that both my husband and I could be there, but we had to check in together at the same time. And once we were there, we couldn't come and go. Once we were there, we were both there, if one of us left, we couldn't come back, and so I just trying to figure things out. But it's funny because when the pediatrician called me and asked, like, why aren't you there? And I told him that I'm trying to figure stuff out and I'm go when my husband gets off, and he was like, Have you packed a bag. And I was like, Well, no, not yet. He's like, I need a bag. And he's like, you're there for the weekend. You're gonna be there for at least a few days, yeah? And I was like, Oh, I didn't realize. I didn't know, yeah,

Scott Benner 22:52 there's a gravity to the situation that just hadn't struck you. Right, right? Yeah.

Chanel 22:57 And so he's like, grab a paper, write this down, and he, step by step, told me the things to pack. And I feel so stupid now, looking back, looking back on that, generally

Scott Benner 23:10 speaking, are you a person who, gosh, I don't mean this in a certain way, but I don't know. Do you need leadership or generally, no,

Chanel 23:19 no, no, no, no, not. Usually, this situation

Scott Benner 23:22 just kind of like really did just mix you up inside. It

Chanel 23:26 was just weird, and everything was hitting, and I didn't understand what was happening. And

Scott Benner 23:35 you're by yourself, anything. You have three kids with you, and you're by yourself too. I'm

Chanel 23:39 by myself. I'm thinking about how I'm gonna get my other kids from school. Like, what do I even say to the other kids? I don't know that

Scott Benner 23:47 started to go through your head right away. Yeah, all the stuff, yeah, all

Chanel 23:51 the things. It was just I couldn't shut my mind off, and everything was just going through my head at a million miles an hour, and I just couldn't focus on packing that bag. Yeah, you know, did

Scott Benner 24:04 you call people and speed them up after that, or did you just let the day unfold? Still? I

Chanel 24:08 just let the day unfold. I sent a message to like my family group, like this is happening with Kate. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers. I don't know what's going to happen. I'll let you know when I know more. So I sent a message to my family. I sent a message to my husband's family. It took my mom two hours to get up here to we don't live super close. I was going

Scott Benner 24:33 to say, is she far away or does she have your level of motivation in these situations?

Chanel 24:38 No, she left immediately. They didn't know anything about diabetes either, but she knew that it was serious that I was being sent to the Children's Hospital. She left right away. It just took time to drive here. I called my husband, and I was like, well, they said, We need to go now. We can't wait till you get off work. And he was like, Oh, okay. He came. We loaded Kate up in the car. We went down there, and everything from my dream became a real life nightmare, and we got thrown into it real quick.

Scott Benner 25:11 Well, you know what her blood sugar was when she got to the hospital? It

Chanel 25:15 was in the three hundreds. I don't know the exact number, but at that point, I still didn't even know what those numbers meant? Like, I understood that it was a little higher than usual, but I didn't know. And so they tell me the numbers, and I was like, Oh, okay. And so then they're like, Well, we're gonna get give her a little insulin to get her number down and see how she responds to it. And so they didn't really explain how it worked. They didn't really explain things. They said you're going to need to poke her finger every three hours. Every two to three hours, poke her finger see what the number is. If it's high, you'll give her insulin. If it's been three hours since the last dose. If it's low, she needs a snack. That's 15 carbs. That's what you were getting in the hospital. That's what they told us. And then they gave us a little booklet to teach us how to count carbs. And I mean, they didn't teach us how insulin works. They didn't teach us much else, right? They didn't teach us much else, yeah. And so I was just so focused on learning to count these carbs that I was like, Well, this is what we need to do. And then I'm setting timers to remember to poke her finger at certain times, because they said every two to three hours, right? And so, like, I just didn't understand even the basics. Yep, I've

Scott Benner 26:40 been through it. I know what you're talking about, but at the very least, can commiserate with you on that part, like it's just not a lot of I mean, you're so confused and upset and sad and all the things you just did such a good job explaining those things are all happening at the same time. And then, even if they were, I've come to believe that even if they were giving you good information, you probably wouldn't retain much of it to begin with, right? You know. And they don't know anyway. Like, that whole like, 15 carbs, 15 minutes test, every three that's the extent of what that nurse probably knows about it. Yeah, you know. So it's not even like, they're not telling you, she just doesn't know. They say things like, we're gonna get you an endocrinologist, and they're gonna, but they're going to teach you everything, and be like, oh, right, how long did they let you stay in the hospital?

Chanel 27:25 So we were in there from Friday evening ish to Sunday afternoon. That's pretty cool. We were in there couple days. I mean, I didn't feel any more prepared leaving the hospital than I did going in, it was just all chaos and crazy, and set the timer so I know when to poke her finger, set the timer so I know when to give her her insulin. And it was all just timers.

Scott Benner 27:55 We ate in the hospital cafeteria as we were leaving the hospital, because I think we were afraid to experience a meal and not be at the hospital. So, like, we left her room, went downstairs and went right into the cafeteria of the hospital to eat. It was just like, it seemed like the safest thing to do, you know. And then I remember getting out to the car and already being confused about something, and I was like, Oh my God. Like, this is the disaster, you know. Like, we have no idea what we're doing. And I even look back on that now, and I don't know how safe she was in that car. Like, I mean, what did we do for that food? I had no idea. You know, just for it was the worst. So I want to kind of jump ahead and come back. So, okay, to jump ahead once you're home, what makes you get your other kids tested?

Chanel 28:46 We didn't do it right away. After a few weeks, I'm trying to figure out, like all the supplies are driving me crazy. I gotta have a way to organize everything. So I'm trying to figure out what to do with the supplies. I'm trying to figure out what to do with this binder of you know, information that they gave us that I don't know really wasn't that helpful. And I saw a thing for trial net that kind of explained about if you have other kids, you can have them tested. And I was like, Oh, well, this came out of nowhere. So chances are they're all fine, right? Chances are it's nothing, but it was kind of in the back of my head like we should probably, we should probably do this, since we have five kids, yeah. So when things settled down a few weeks later, I made the phone call to set that up.

Scott Benner 29:38 Did you do that in a lab, or did you have them send out the kids? We went

Chanel 29:42 to a lab. We scheduled the appointment. Took all five kids with us. My husband and I were also tested. Since we were both under the 45 I think it is that they'll test that too. Did

Scott Benner 29:55 anybody besides your son come back with auto antibodies? Yes.

Chanel 29:59 Yes, so my son came back with two, and our other daughter, who was two at the time, came back with four. Our baby was too little to test, and my oldest daughter didn't have any at that time. Okay, we've retested. We retested a couple months ago and found out that our oldest daughter now has one of the auto antibodies, so she has developed one in the last two years. And our baby, we he's now three, so he was tested for the first time, and so far, he doesn't have any. Oh

Scott Benner 30:39 my gosh. So so so 85 days after this happens to you, you get another diagnosis. But how long between the information coming from child net and the diagnosis happening like, what was the gap of time there?

Chanel 30:52 So it took a few weeks, probably maybe about a month. We did the test. We figured that our daughter, since she had four, we figured that she would be next, and then they had us come back for the glucose tolerance test for the two kids who had the markers, and my son, Ryan, who had two of the markers, he failed that glucose tolerance test and was diagnosed then he was diagnosed at that time,

Scott Benner 31:23 right then. And there they were like, Yeah,

Chanel 31:26 we had to wait for the official paperwork to come back. But after they did the finger poke, the lady was kind of like, oh, we'll just have to see what the lab says. This doesn't look great. And so we didn't, we didn't really realize that they were telling us he had it. We were waiting for the official results. But then our daughter, who had the four, she passed her glucose tolerance test and has passed two cents on so it's kind of just the waiting game for her.

Scott Benner 31:58 Yeah, my gosh, so you're gonna have three with type one at some point.

Chanel 32:03 Yep, at least three of them will have type one. How

Scott Benner 32:07 is that knowledge for you, knowing that it's coming? What does that

Chanel 32:10 feel like? Oh, it is scary. It terrifies me. I hate it, but I think that it's actually kind of good for her, because things she'll say, she's mentally preparing for the day that it happens. So she'll say things like, when I have diabetes, I'm going to be so brave when I have diabetes, really, can my purse be pink when I have diabetes? And I'm like, Oh, it breaks my heart to hear her say those things, yeah. But also, I think it's good that she knows that it's a real possibility for her.

Scott Benner 32:56 Has she ever had her finger tested or anything like that? Yes, we,

Chanel 33:00 we will do random, random finger pokes on all the kids, really. And she has worn a Dexcom. We used the last 10 days of our transmitter one time to just see what hers was doing,

Scott Benner 33:14 and she seems to handle it all pretty well. Yeah, that didn't sound that didn't sound very comforting. Go ahead

Chanel 33:23 as well as she can when Kate is thrown into it, and she had that terrible blood draw experience, and then all of a sudden, everyone's poking her and, you know, giving her insulin and testing her blood. And it was so terrible, we had to literally wrestle her down to even poke her finger. She was so scared and so confused and just didn't understand what was happening. And so I know that it won't be like that when it happens with my other daughter, with Carissa, yeah, wow, because she's she's got it in her head and she's seen the things happening, and how much

Scott Benner 34:02 of their care is you and how much is your husband? Do you guys split it? Or is it one of those things where you know you're like, I do it, or he does it. It's

Chanel 34:10 mostly me. He's done all the same classes and been to the appointments, and he knows how to do all the things, but I, I stay home and he works. So okay, mostly fall off on me. How are you handling all that? Not well, most of the time, I don't think outside people are like, you're handling this so amazing. And I'm like, I am a mess. I am not. What makes you feel like you're a mess? My brain never shuts off. I'm always thinking about it. I'm always checking it. Someone always needs something like someone's always beeping, someone's someone needs a correction, someone needs a juice box, someone you know, yeah,

Scott Benner 34:50 someone's always beeping. So so people are telling you you're doing great. You don't feel. You're doing great, right? Is it you being hard on yourself? Is it psychological? Do you feel what's the level of of the impact on you? I handle

Chanel 35:10 it better now than I did in the beginning, for sure, because, you know, I've learned a lot, and I've had experiences, and so I know that I handle it better now than I was at first. I cried every day, and I'm not usually, I'm not usually a crier, so I just go in my room and just cry, and then I kind of wipe my tears away and pretend like everything was okay. And then I'd go do it again. Go do it again.

Scott Benner 35:40 Yeah, I was like the game, do you have any support? I mean, you got five kids, and you're, you're stay at home, mom, right, yeah, right. So do you have any support for you?

Chanel 35:50 My family, they're far away, but they're supportive. They've tried to learn. They've tried to, like the last question, see how things are going, I can leave them for a short time. My oldest daughter is actually pretty amazing. She after, after Ryan was diagnosed, she was kind of just watching things and how everything unfolded. And she came to me one day and she was like, Mommy, I want, I want to learn how to help you take care of them. Oh, wow. And I was like, Well, this is a lot. This is a lot for a nine year old. She was only nine at the time, right? She started to learn. And she I would, I would draw, I would like count the carbs and drop the insulin, and, you know, do all that,

Scott Benner 36:44 just let her feel like she's part of it. But yeah,

Chanel 36:47 she she would be there, and she'd be part of it. And I taught her how to do the finger pokes. And Ryan was more open to having having her help than than Kate was okay. And so that first time i i took a picture of it. It was so tender. She gave him a shot, and, like, I took a picture, and it was just like these two little kids, and they just looking at each other, and she was trying to be brave, and he was trying to be brave. And, you know,

Scott Benner 37:22 geez, that's kind of lovely, isn't that nice? And

Chanel 37:25 I was just sitting there watching, like, trying not to cry again, because crying is what I what I would do. And since then, she my oldest daughter. Her name is kiersly, and curiously, has totally stepped up. I don't even hesitate to leave my kids with her in charge, even as an 11 year old, she understands it. She can count carbs, she can give insulin. I found out by accident that she can change their pumps. I we went on a family date that my parents had given us for Christmas, and I we had to leave the kids. And so we left with my older nephew, who's in his 20s, and his girlfriend, and we were like, at least I'll have an adult there in case they need it, right? And so they had pumps, they had Dexcom, so we could see their numbers, we could text them. So it was fine, but we were gone for, I don't know, five hours, and when we came back, my nephew's girlfriend was like, Oh, by the way, Ryan's thing came off. And I was like, his thing came off. Like, what came off? Yeah, because I could still see his number, his pump came off. So I was like, Ryan, let's get this. Let's get this back on you. I pull out our bag. I'm, like, starting to get stuff set up to replace his pump site. And he's just looking at me, like, getting crazy. And I was like, what came off? Do you need a new pump site? And curiously, my oldest like, Oh, Mom, I already changed that. And I was like, awesome. You did like, she had never done one, but I had, she had never done it. She'd only watched me. I said, You changed it. And she said, Well, yeah, it fell off, and I knew that he needed insulin, so I changed it, wow. And I was like, oh, cool, okay, I'm

Scott Benner 39:24 gonna go back to what I was doing. Thanks. Like,

Chanel 39:27 you got new insulin, and you put it in the cartridge and, and she's like, Yeah, I got I put it in the cartridge, I took a few bubbles out, I got the air out of the syringe, I put it back in, I build the tubing. Like she went through the whole thing. And she was like, I handled it, Mom, because I knew he needed that. Geez. And I was like, this girl is like, awesome. Let's

Scott Benner 39:50 also get her in charge of other stuff, because it sounds like she could handle more. Oh, she

Chanel 39:56 She's so great. She's She might

Scott Benner 39:58 not be doing enough around the house. Else, this kid's got a ceiling, you know, he's pretty high. Oh, that's awesome. Wow, isn't that great? How old was she again?

Chanel 40:06 So she was 10 at that time, by the time name. Oh, that's awesome, by the time that happened, but

Scott Benner 40:12 there's a heartwarming part of your story. So yeah,

Chanel 40:15 I was like, she's got this. She knows how to help me. Oh, it's so

Scott Benner 40:20 nice, but she doesn't feel a lot of pressure about it. She just, she knows how to jump in if she needs to, like, you don't think she's running around thinking like, this is her job, right?

Chanel 40:27 No, I don't think that. But if she hears something and she thinks that I'm like, in the other room, I've heard her like I heard that beep, what was the number? And she'll check in with them, and she'll be like, I think you should probably have four Skittles. What if

Scott Benner 40:46 you said to her, the dishes need to be done? Would she be like,

Chanel 40:50 Oh, no, she would do that. She would do that. Look at that. Yeah, she she does jobs around the house, my kids,

Scott Benner 40:57 my kids help her. Very easy. Here is what I'm realizing very easy. My gosh, when you asked to come on the podcast, did you have a reason, like, or were you just, like, I want to chat, or, like, Was there something that you really wanted to make sure you got out? I don't really

Chanel 41:10 know why. I just saw a post on your Facebook page and you had said something like, see if you can catch my interest. And I was like, just curious, wonder if I could catch his interest. So I wrote a couple sentences, and you sent me the link to sign up. So I was like, Oh, I

Scott Benner 41:28 did, all right. I just, I just wanted to make sure, like, Minister, I don't want to, like, get me, we're not done. But I I want to leave time here, because there you have notes, like, you send a little note here. I

Chanel 41:38 don't even remember what I put and not, I'm not gonna lie. You said there

Scott Benner 41:43 were some frustration you had with the doctor telling you to aim for an A, 1c, over seven. I was wondering if you'd tell me more about that. Oh, yeah. Also, there's no chance you're from Canada, right? Originally? No, no, because you owe ya a lot. Did you know that? You didn't know that not from Minnesota. Haven't spent time in Wisconsin, nothing like that. Nope, just Utah my whole life. No kidding, I've enjoyed your accent the whole time. So I'm sorry. Go ahead. We didn't even know I had an accent. Everyone does, and no one hears it. I sound like a trash person, from what I understand from the people who write in. So go ahead, please. About the this 71

Chanel 42:19 say, okay, so we were, I don't know, a few appointments in to both kids being diagnosed. We usually try to schedule them so they can go at the same time, because just easier for me. So they took both kids, a one, CS, and we had them they were at like, 6.1 and 6.2 and Kate had been up in the eight, and then, like, gradually come down a little bit, but not, not really. And so finally, I felt like I was doing something right, because, you know, they're in the low sixes now, yeah, so I'm, I'm improving on something. And the lady came in, and I was feeling pretty good, and she came in and lectured me and told me that it was unrealistic to expect a one CS under seven, and that I needed to come to terms with that. And she wanted me to change what I was doing, and aim to get their a one, CS up into the seven to eight range.

Scott Benner 43:24 She wanted you to go up two points, yeah,

Chanel 43:28 like somewhere in the sevens, high sevens, close to eight, try to keep it under eight. And I was like, why would I do that? That makes no sense to me. Why would I change what I'm doing if it's working and if it's lowering their A, 1c, why would I try to keep them in the

Scott Benner 43:45 seven? Did you ask the question? Yeah, what was the answer? She just told

Chanel 43:49 me that it wasn't realistic and I was going to kill myself trying to keep them that low, that I couldn't maintain it like it was going to be too stressful for me

Scott Benner 43:58 at that time. Did you feel like it was too much for you? No, I felt

Chanel 44:03 less stressed knowing that they were coming down, knowing that I was doing something better than before.

Scott Benner 44:10 How do you handle that then when, when it said to you,

Chanel 44:14 I said, like, What are you talking about? Like, this is working. And she's like, well, you must be having lots of lows. And I said, you can see their Dexcom charts show me where the significant lows are. Like, why would I aim to keep it higher? Why wouldn't I try to keep their numbers as close to normal range as I could? And her answer was that long term complications don't start for at least 30 years. Did you tell her your kid was four? And I was like, So you're telling me that I'm gonna have my 35 year old daughter coming to me with these complications, like, I can't see I have neuropathy, I, you know, kidney stuff, like, I don't want my kids in their 30s coming to me saying. Why didn't you do more for us when we were younger? Because now we're having to deal with this. Yeah, and so I said thinking about that for their future is more stressful to me than trying to keep their numbers in range. Now sure,

Scott Benner 45:15 what brilliant thing did they say to that?

Chanel 45:20 And they were like, well, it's really the long term complications are unknown, and they're not likely that's not going to happen with your kids, because it would have to be really high numbers for a really long time, and so that won't happen. And I was like, but you don't know that that won't happen. You're here now. You're telling me this crap that like, I don't think that's true. You don't know that they're not going to have complications. And I said you're not going to be here in their 30s when this stuff starts popping up, if I don't get a hold of this right now,

Scott Benner 45:56 also, I'm doing a good job. Why are you not being supportive of me? Do I'm doing it like you're telling me it's impossible, by the way, it's every cliche that's gonna burn you out. You must be having a lot of lows. You're not having a lot of lows. Oh, you don't feel burned out. Okay. Well, you know what? It's gonna take 30 years for there to be any problems anyway. Oh, you don't like that answer. Well, what about this answer? Like, at what point would the person not say, Hey, let me see. I wonder how you're accomplishing this. Why don't you tell me what you're doing? Maybe I'm thinking incorrectly. No, just hammer away at all the all the standards. How old was this doctor? I'm assuming that you fired and don't go to anymore.

Chanel 46:34 We have switched doctors a couple times. I still don't have one that I'm happy with. I still don't feel like they help me with pump settings or anything, and I don't feel confident completely. I just try things right, but I don't feel like the doctors help me. And at that point when I said that, she was like, Oh, well, I can see you're really stressed about this. And I was oh, and I was like, wait, wait a minute. So I'm just getting angry with her, yeah,

Scott Benner 47:02 because, oh, you just made me mad. Go ahead, Keith. I'm sorry.

Chanel 47:06 And so I had said these things like, show me the lows. Show me this. Like, why would I do that? And she's like, I'm gonna send a social worker in to talk to you, because I can tell that this is just too much.

Scott Benner 47:18 Oh, you Can I curse in the church her? You guys don't curse, right? We don't. Okay. Can I do it for you? Would you mind? Would it bother you? If it'll bother you? I won't do it, but if you want, I can speak for you in this moment and let it be cathartic for you. Because what that all right, I won't do it. But my what in the hell is she thinking, right?

Chanel 47:41 And so I was just angry. And I was like, I don't need to talk to a social worker. I need a doctor who will help me and who cares about the well being of my kids. Like, I don't need to talk to anyone about this. I need you to help me. Yeah. And she was like, well, just talk to her for a minute, and we'll see how you're feeling after that. And I was just no mad, and I don't want to talk to you. I don't I'm not talking to them. Like, just help me.

Scott Benner 48:12 Was this a can? I just have the age of the person,

Chanel 48:15 probably 40s, not like a married person married? Yeah, do you think they're married? I have no idea man or a woman. It was a woman, really.

Scott Benner 48:27 I don't understand if I spoke to my wife like that. She kicked me out of the house. First of all, so I assumed a married woman would never talk to anybody like that. That was my point. Oh, my God, I would never. I gotta tell you something. I'm not a huge fan of this word, because I think it's overused, but I think she was gaslighting you, like, when you're telling her how you feel, and she's like, that's not how you feel. Yeah, I'll send in a social worker now to let you know how upset you are and why you're upset. You're like, I'm I'm not upset. I'm disappointed in your lack of direction. Oh, and then she goes, No, you are let me send in another professional to let you know how upset you

Chanel 49:05 are. It totally felt that way, and I was just so frustrated because I went from being happy I'm proud of myself for doing something right, to just being so angry and frustrated, and I didn't even want to talk to any of them. Like, obviously they don't care about helping my kids with this. Or you, yeah, or me. Like, they don't care about them. They're just trying to scoot me through and, you

Scott Benner 49:35 know, and make a little more money sending in another doctor they can bill you for too, right? There's another spot I would have cursed right there, Shanel, if you would have let me. Whoa. What about that boy? That's that's really interesting and frustrating and not surprising. At the same time, that was the day

Chanel 49:53 where I was like, they're clearly not going to help me. I've got to figure this out. Yeah, I've got to help my kids the best I can, and I can't depend on the medical professionals to be there for us, at least not that lady,

Scott Benner 50:09 geez. Yeah, wow, wow, that's really, I don't know. You know, after hearing these stories so many times, I don't know why, I'm shocked, but there's something about that specific back and forth that I found particularly nauseating me too. Yeah, no kidding. And look at you sticking up for yourself. That was that was well done too. Did you look back on that after and be like, Wow, I did not take any crap from her at all,

Chanel 50:35 not really. I just didn't even know. I didn't know what to say, and so I just said exactly what I was thinking. Why?

Scott Benner 50:45 Yeah, if you, if you weren't in the church, you would have cursed at her, for sure, because I was gonna curse at her, I swear to you, like I don't know why nobody ever says stuff like that to me. I'd be thrilled to hear about that. I would have enjoyed that argument very, very well. I sent the kid out of the room first, said, Hey, go outside for a second, and then I would have said, You taking this job seriously at all, like, what is wrong with you? I'm in here with a major accomplishment. I'm looking for a little more help. You're telling me I'm doing it wrong. I'm clearly doing it and, oh my god, I can't go back out. You've made me very upset. Not you personally the story. I'm sorry. No, don't, please. Don't apologize.

Chanel 51:22 How long ago was this? A little over a year ago, 2023

Scott Benner 51:27 look how far we've come, everyone, look how far we've come. You know, it's funny, may I say I made that cold wind series? Yeah, I got some notes from people. They were like, you know, is he shining a bad light on doctors. You don't, you know people need to be able to trust their doctors, and you know you shouldn't be doing that. One person told me it was like, it's dangerous that you're making this series. I'm like, I'm letting people come on and tell me about their work environment. And you think that's the dangerous part. Talking about, it's the dangerous part, not that they're doing it, the talking about it's the dangerous part, and I didn't even know how to respond to that email. And so if that person's listening, that's why you didn't hear back from me, because I thought you were an idiot, and I just didn't know how to respond back. But I did get that sentiment a few times, like you shouldn't shine. Like one person wrote me and said in this episode, the doctors came off very poorly in that episode. And I think it's dangerous for people to hear that what like, I don't understand like, I don't understand how things like this. I don't understand how people's minds work. You know what I mean, like, these people are out there. Some of them are doing a great job. I know plenty of great doctors. I know of 1000 endos you could have gone to where you wouldn't have had that experience. But the truth is, is you did have that experience, and that person is meeting people every day and using that level of ineptitude to practice their their craft. And in a world where I just interviewed a woman a couple days ago who, by the way, has someone else's kidney in her now and then goes back and tells a story about how she was mistreated by doctors as a child. And you think, Well, I hope they hear that story. I hope they hear that the way you treat a kid when she's 10. It could be the beginning of a long, winding, sad, dark path that ends with her with her sister's kidney. You know what I mean, and I'm not being ham fisted about it, like I the story it relates. She got bad advice from doctors, then they didn't help her, then they treated her poorly. She spiraled, and this is where she ended up. And you could that same thing. Can you imagine if you would have just said, oh, a seven or eight is okay, okay, cool. And then you just left, and then that's what you started doing instead. And then, 30 years from now, one of those things that you're worried about actually does happen to one of your children, like, it's too late now, like, oh, it's very upsetting. Seriously,

Chanel 53:59 I don't know well. In the first few months, the first couple appointments, I did do that, I just went with what the doctor said and didn't question it.

Scott Benner 54:09 But then you're on your own, you brought it down, and then they came after you. Yeah, yeah. There's a post like this in the Facebook group at least a couple of times a week. Yeah. People are just like, I finally found my success. I know what I'm doing. Look at this charts. Look at these graphs. Oh, by the way, today I got yelled at by my doctor, Yep, yeah, good for them. Everybody should be real proud anyway. And then, you know, who's the bad guy in all this? By the way, when it's over, it's me. I'm the bad guy for pointing it out. Like, you know, like you don't want, you don't want people to speak ill of you do a decent job. Like, now, everyone's not looking for perfection, but you got to be able to hit the big points. You know what? I mean, right?

Chanel 54:53 Oh my gosh. I mean, I have learned so much from from listening to the podcast. Us and from the different series, and I appreciate it so much. Thank you made such a difference for us and for my kids and I, I will listen to it in the car, or, like, doing pickups or while I'm cleaning stuff. And it's really interesting to see that, to see my kids pick up on things they hear when I don't even think they're listening really uh huh and stuff I say, or the good stuff, mostly the good stuff. But they'll, I'll kind of look at him, like, where did you learn that? And, well, we heard it on the podcast nice, like, oh, well, there you go. That's

Scott Benner 55:43 awesome. Wow, I should pay closer attention to what I'm saying. I'm just kidding. I'm pretty I pay pretty close attention to what I'm saying. Oh, that's lovely. I know there are people whose kids hear it, and I try not to think about it while I'm making it, because I think it would turn into a Mr. Rogers podcast, and I think most people would be upset. But, you know, I like that. You've got your, you know, you can make your own decisions about what your kids hear. I'm assuming they didn't listen to, like the like some of the after dark ones and stuff like that.

Chanel 56:10 Well, that's actually funny, because pretty early on, a stranger off Facebook who lives in my area gave me something. I don't remember what she was giving away, but something I thought I needed. I went to her house, picked it up, we talked for a little bit, and she gave me a little note card that said Juicebox Podcast, and, like, Pro Tip series, you know, yeah. And it was just kind of sticking there in my binder and so. And then I heard about other places. I read a little bit about it online, and I wasn't I never listened to podcasts. I didn't even know how to listen to podcasts. And so I was like, well, maybe I'll give this a shot. And I just opened it and clicked one, and it happened to be an after dark one, and I didn't know.

Scott Benner 57:03 Sorry. You know, that's one of the things I work. I do have all these conversations with people sometimes, like in my private life, and they'll be like, can you imagine if this is the first episode somebody heard?

Chanel 57:13 And it was definitely the first one. I always say, like, Yeah, I wish

Scott Benner 57:17 there was a way around that, but I mean, it is what it is. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I can't like, hopefully you heard it and you were like, oh, maybe I'll just switch to a different episode and try again. But I thought about that. I do wish there was, like, there's part of me that wishes there was a way to segment it up differently in but podcast players just don't let you do stuff like that. So which one do you remember what you heard? Like, what the story? I don't even

Chanel 57:40 remember what it was, but right away I was like, Oh, I can't play this with the kids around. I'm gonna have to wait. I don't know. And so I kind of didn't go back for a little bit. But then I was feeling so desperate, and I needed help, and none of the doctors were helping me. And I was like, I'm gonna go back to that podcast and see if I can learn stuff. And at that point I was

Scott Benner 58:02 like, oh, okay, they're not all like that one. Yeah, I

Chanel 58:06 just clicked on one that happened to be one I shouldn't listen to with

Scott Benner 58:10 the kids, right? Have you ever heard butt hole adjacent? I have

Chanel 58:14 heard that one I actually I went through. Listen to pro tips. Listen to defining diabetes. Then I listened to, like, runs in the family.

Scott Benner 58:28 So I not stuff that really pertains to what you're going through,

Chanel 58:30 uh huh. So I knocked a whole bunch of those out. And then I started listening at the beginning. Did you really listen to, like, a few 100 episodes? And then I was like, well, I should listen to the more recent ones. So it's like a chunk in the middle, there's like 500 or so that I haven't gotten to. I'll get to them. Take your time. I'm working on it. We're racing. We're working through them. You have,

Scott Benner 58:54 you have no time and plenty of time at the same time. So, right? So listen, what about other dreams you've had? What are, what are the other dreams you've had that have sort of come true in in the real world?

Chanel 59:07 Well, pertaining to the diabetes thing. Well, that,

Scott Benner 59:11 yeah, we know that one. But has there been anything else? There

Chanel 59:15 was one more that was kind of, well, diabetes related. We didn't have a Dexcom for, what, just over a month before Kate was able to get on a Dexcom. So we were doing it the old school way, finger poking all that one of the first nights that she had a Dexcom, we were just using the receiver. She didn't have a phone yet. We couldn't just look at our phone in the night and and see where she was at. I heard like clear as bells, I'm asleep in the middle of the night, and I hear her voice saying, Mommy, I'm low. I need a finger poke. And she said it twice. I sat up, I turned on my one. On my phone, and she was not there. She was not in my room. So I'm like, What in the world? So I like, woke up my husband, Russell, did you hear Kate? Like, is she over there? And he's like, she's not here. You're crazy. You didn't hear anything. You'd be

Scott Benner 1:00:20 like, buddy, do you not remember the dream about the diabetes? How could you dismiss me like this? And so I

Chanel 1:00:26 was like, well, she just told me that she's low. And he kind of like, rolled over and pulled the blanket up. And so I got up and went into her room and go look at the Dexcom receiver. And it says signal loss, and we had never seen that message yet. We were pretty new to Dexcom, right? So I grabbed the bag, and I was like, well, I'll just do a finger poke so I can see my husband comes in the doorway, totally confused, and he's like, What are you doing? And I was like, Well, Kate told me she was low. She told me she needed a finger poke. And he's kind of like, asleep and tired, and, you know, half asleep, and he's annoyed, and he's like, No, she didn't Chanel. She's been sleeping here the whole time. She hasn't gotten up, she hasn't moved. You're crazy. Like, he's

Scott Benner 1:01:18 like, I picked the wrong lady. I'm stuck now. I got five kids with her, but she's she had a lot of crazy stuff. No, no, no. I'm sure that thought has crossed

Chanel 1:01:26 his neck. I went ahead and poked her finger, and she was in the 30s. Look at you. She was low and with things like that. I'm, I'm really trying to learn to trust myself more if I have one of those thoughts or one of my feelings, maybe I'm not a crazy person. Maybe I want

Scott Benner 1:01:49 you sleeping with those little lottery cards and a golf pencil. I seriously. I want you sleeping with a golf pencil and those lottery cards. You wake up with any numbers in your head. I want you jotting them right down. You go right down to the the 711 or whatever they got out there in Utah, and I want you buying tickets. That's so CR i I've had deja vu once. That was so incredibly accurate. It freaks me out, like 50 years, like 40 years later, but we were in the backyard of like a person my dad worked with. We'd never been to their home before, and it was like this big party, and all the kids were outside. We were all sitting around these chairs, and one kid was sitting up on the back of the chair. You know what I mean? Like he had his feet where your butt goes, and his ass was up on the butt on the back of the chair. And you know, there's all these people around that I don't really know. You're trying to be social a little bit. And there's one kid who has snuck a beer outside, and he's got it and he's talking to somebody, and in my mind, I watched the kid sitting on the chair fall off the chair. The beer got knocked over. Everything got tussled around, people moved in a certain way, and a split second later, it all happened. Oh, man, it was just the strangest thing that I've ever experienced in my life. Yeah, I have no idea. I'm sure there's an explanation for it. Like it happened and I froze, maybe, and then it felt like I saw it like I have no idea what the actual explanation is, but that that stuck with me. I don't remember much about being a kid, but that whole thing, that scenario, just sticks in my mind. Like, if you gave me the furniture right now, I could settle up and put all the people in the space. It's it's stuck to me so much. Wow. Anyway, that's very cool. Anything else, no lottery numbers. Nothing like where we can make a couple bucks, nothing,

Chanel 1:03:38 I know. I wish, I wish I had the lottery numbers, it would really, really come in handy five

Scott Benner 1:03:44 kids. I bet you do wish that, yep, jeez, you have five children. So many kids, it doesn't seem like a lot to you, or does it just seem like what people do? I

Chanel 1:03:55 came from a family with six kids. My My husband came from a family with five, so we always figured, you know, we'll have four or five kids. We'll see how it goes. Hey,

Scott Benner 1:04:09 your your husband, uh, owns an oil field.

Chanel 1:04:12 Uh, what is he? What kind of work does he? He's a civil engineer. That does

Scott Benner 1:04:15 not sound like a job, that makes a ton of money,

Chanel 1:04:20 not a ton of money. You're right. Things, things are a little bit crazy over here, but, but like, we want all of them. We love them.

Scott Benner 1:04:29 Oh no, I wouldn't say otherwise. No, I'm just, I'm trying to figure out how they're going to do you already talk in their ear. You're like, you don't need

Chanel 1:04:35 college. Well, my oldest actually wants to be an endocrinologist. Oh

Scott Benner 1:04:39 god. Well, tell her, there's that. What about something in a trade? Huh? Have she? Has she thought about plumbing? That's a really good job. Makes a ton of money, and you don't have to go to college for it. Let's see what we can get her involved in.

Chanel 1:04:52 Maybe we can, like, whisper to him in their sleep or something, get there.

Scott Benner 1:04:57 I both of my kids. I was like, you guys don't want to do a trade. Like, I. Think that'd be awesome. You know what I mean? Like, I'll split what college costs with you. I offered my son a car to stay home from college. I was like, this will be cheaper for us if I just purchase you a vehicle and you go to this school, like, more local school. I want to play baseball in school. I was like, Oh, I bet you do.

Chanel 1:05:20 Yeah. Oh, my God. Well, I think they know that they're gonna have to to help out with that.

Scott Benner 1:05:25 Yeah. Well, the one's definitely gonna help. The one girl is awesome. She'll probably get a job and start paying for college herself. The one

Chanel 1:05:33 she's she's already mowing lawns and babysitting for people, so she's got a savings account.

Scott Benner 1:05:39 I knew I wasn't kidding. That kid's got her own money, right? She does.

Chanel 1:05:43 How old is she now? She's 11, yeah, be damn

Scott Benner 1:05:46 Yeah. She's gonna own something. Yeah, she's pretty

Chanel 1:05:50 proud. She's not a spender. She saves her money the she mows lawns for a neighbor. He hired her, and he's hired her for just some odd jobs around his yard, nice. And he like, joked around with her and like, you're gonna go buy a doll. You're gonna and she

Scott Benner 1:06:11 did not pick I started a 401, K, but thank you.

Chanel 1:06:14 She did not pick up on his sarcasm at all. And she's like, No, I'm gonna put it in my credit union account. And he, he just kind of looked at her, and she's like, college is expensive.

Scott Benner 1:06:29 I got a money market paying 5% right now, buddy.

Chanel 1:06:33 And actually she does. And she was like, I'm gonna put it in my money market account and earn some interest on this. Where does she learn this? I set up a little account for all the kids. They'll get money, and we'll take their piggy banks in, and I'll let them deposit it and stuff. Awesome. But she has really taken it seriously. I

Scott Benner 1:06:51 was gonna say, can you put her on learning Dropbox for me and have her come give me a 15 minute tutorial? Because I'm having trouble setting I feel like she could get it worked out pretty quickly. Oh my gosh. Okay, so she's

Chanel 1:07:04 very, very bright, and things seem to come naturally to her. It's awesome. Good for her.

Scott Benner 1:07:11 That's really cool. All right, so I'm gonna let you go, but first, let me tell you this. I've learned this from chat GPT. A Utah accent and a Canadian accent have some similarities, but are generally quite distinct from each other. But here's a quick breakdown so one they have Val pronunciations. Both Utah and Canadian accents share some vowel shifts, but the Canadian accent is known for the Canadian raising where words like about sound more like a boot. Utah speakers don't typically have this trait, though they may have their own unique vowel pronunciation, such as flattening or lengthening certain vowels. And then there's something here called rotis. Roth rot. Rotith is, how the hell do you say that? Hold on a second. This thing's amazing, by the way. It's pronounced, rotis, t rhoticity. Okay, it came in my headphone so you couldn't hear it. But rhoticity, both accents are rhotic, meaning they pronounce the R at the end of the words, unlike some other English accents, uh, it tonation, uh, intonation and melody. Canadian accents have a distinct upward intonation, especially at the end of sentences, often referred to as Canadian question intonation. This is less common in Utah, which tends to have more of a level and straightforward intonation and word choices in slang, Canadian English often incorporates unique slang and expressions influenced by French and regional Canadian culture, whereas Utah slang is more influenced by western American culture. Oh,

Chanel 1:08:44 there you go. Bob's your uncle? Interesting. Yep, I didn't even know

Scott Benner 1:08:48 it's not the same, but it's so similar that it struck me for a little bit. Did we talk about everything you want to talk about? I

Chanel 1:08:55 don't know what else I put in the note, but like, there's been frustrating things with insurance. There's been totally mean people who just don't understand. We've had some scary lows a couple times with both of my kids, and we've had some some terrible school nurses. Luckily, we have a great one now, but in the past, we've had some real, real bad ones. What's your worst school nurse story? He was in kindergarten. She got on a pump just after kindergarten started, and the nurse would just keep her in her office all day. She wouldn't give her corrections. She said that the only time they can do corrections is at meal times, even though, you know that's not true when they're on the pump. And so she would she kept her in there for six hours one day and just monitoring her number, but refusing to give her insulin because her blood sugar was high, yeah. And so I. Called, and I'm like, What is going on? And she's like, well, we're just monitoring it. And I was like, well, like, give her a correction. And so that time I actually, I went and I went to the school and did it because she wouldn't. But another day she was going into this was also Kate. She was going into lunch, her number was like 72 which used to scare me, but I'm not scared of I'm not scared of that anymore. So this nurse decided not to dose her for lunch because she was low, so she didn't give her any insulin at all. And so then I'm at home seeing her number just like, skyrocket, and all of a sudden it's just high too straight up. And I called because nothing was changing. And I was like, What is going on here? What's happening? And she's like, Well, Kate was low, so I didn't give her her insulin for lunch. And I was like, Well, how many carbs Did she eat for lunch? Well, 85 so she gave her 85 carbs uncovered. Wouldn't give her a correction even. And I was like, but you didn't, you didn't even give her the insulin she needed for her meal. Yeah. And she's not low anymore, right? And she's not low, she's opposite. She's totally high, and so give her the insulin. And she said, Well, now, unfortunately, it's outside of mealtime, so I can't do a correction. Why are people so? And I was like, but you didn't give her her meal time insulin. She didn't get any of that. Yeah, give it to her. Now she needs insulin. And she was like, well, hopefully it will come down. And I said it will not come down unless you give her the insulin she needs. She needs the insulin for it to come down. You can't just keep her in your office monitoring things, because it's not coming down unless she has insulin. That's a registered nurse. Yeah, she was our school nurse. And the same lady another day she calls me, and Ryan was a little bit high. He's up, like, low two hundreds. And she was like, well, he's high, and I'm watching them, and I'm monitoring things because, you know, and it was the same thing. I can't give him a correction.

Scott Benner 1:12:22 We are bolusing. We're bolusing hope. So I'm sure it's gonna come down any second now. Oh, by the oh, let's call your episode Bolus hope. By the way, that's a great idea.

Chanel 1:12:34 She said, I'm gonna take him for a little run. I'll have him like we'll go on a walk, and we'll run a little and I'll have him drink some water, please. I was like, Please, just give him insulin and send him back to class. As long as he feels fine, the insulin will need a little bit of time to work, but if you give it to him, then it can start. We're

Scott Benner 1:12:54 willing to hope, we're willing to pray, we're willing to go on a run. We've given him a glass of water. Can you give him insulin? No, it's the wrong time. And so I

Chanel 1:13:03 said, please send him back to class. He doesn't need to be in your office waiting for it to come down. As long as he feels fine, send him back to class. So about five minutes later, I get a call from him on his phone, which he doesn't normally call during school, right? And so I was like, Well, this is weird.

Scott Benner 1:13:20 Hey, Mom, the nurse is an idiot.

Chanel 1:13:23 That's basically how it went. Hey, Mommy. Like, what's going on, bud? And he says the nurse is making me run laps.

Scott Benner 1:13:32 And I'll tell you what else. She doesn't even have a money market account. She doesn't know what she's doing. He's

Chanel 1:13:38 like, huffing and puffing. And I'm like, I just told her to send you back to class. Why are you running laps? And he's like, Oh, she sees that I'm on the phone. I gotta go. And he hangs up on me. And I was like,

Scott Benner 1:13:54 Are you kidding me? They had him cut the shrubs and dig a dig a trench, and

Chanel 1:13:59 so yeah, I was like, you gotta be, you gotta be kidding. That's awesome. That's this is not a thing. Oh, there's so many dumb

Scott Benner 1:14:07 people. It's fantastic.

Chanel 1:14:09 She doesn't, she doesn't work there anymore. No, she wasn't

Scott Benner 1:14:12 a she wasn't a star, a star, shocking. No, my God, that's great. I gotta go. She sees me.

Chanel 1:14:23 She sees that I'm on the phone. I gotta go.

Scott Benner 1:14:25 That's funny, but it's also sad. Oh, it's crazy, well. And

Chanel 1:14:28 she would also, like, call me to tattle on the kids. Like,

Scott Benner 1:14:37 you know, I had him out running laps, and he stopped and he was on his

Chanel 1:14:40 phone. Kate was caught eating a Skittle in class. And I was like, perfect, and she felt like she needed a little bump, like, that's what I'm trying to teach her to do. Caught. She was caught eating a Skittle. What

Scott Benner 1:14:54 a phrasing. How come the How come the story isn't Hey, you know, we just wanted to let you know how. Probably are of Kate. She got a little low in class. She took care of it herself.

Chanel 1:15:03 Oh, it was a total tattle, like, and I said, like, great, that's what I want her to do. I want her to recognize that she needs something and to just do it. Yeah. And like, this is part of her learning how to take care of this. And then another day Ryan was caught giving himself insulin, and I was like, perfect. He noticed he needed a correction, and he was doing it,

Scott Benner 1:15:27 yeah. Everybody's like, yeah. It's weird how people think I'm not kidding.

Chanel 1:15:32 And she's like, No, they need to come down to my office and I need to supervise that. They can't just give themselves insulin. They can't just eat something. We need to know about it. And I was like, you don't the whole goal is to get these kids independent in their care. They need to learn these things. And I am proud of them, and I don't want you to tattle to me. Like, maybe get

Scott Benner 1:15:56 on the team for God's sakes, seriously, right? Like, try to see what's going on here.

Chanel 1:16:02 And she actually told me, because, well, if I see something that I'm like, Oh, we're gonna have to catch this before, you know. So I'll tell them to eat. I'll text them and tell them to eat a little something or and they just give me a thumbs up, so I know that they saw it, and they do that. So she actually called me one day and she said, I don't have the right to text them while they're in her care. And I was like, I don't have the right. These are my kids. Like, what I have the right? You can't tell me not to not to text them.

Scott Benner 1:16:40 That's awesome. So, yeah, oh, so stop talking to those kids, because you're finding out what's going on. Yeah,

Chanel 1:16:47 pretty much, that's how it felt. Unbelievable. Are you calling the other parents? If you see their kid eat a Skittle or a Eminem or something, you're calling their parents to tattle?

Scott Benner 1:16:57 Yeah, probably not. I'm gonna guess,

Chanel 1:17:01 like, one little Skittle is not gonna send her up as high as you have her by not dosing her for lunch

Scott Benner 1:17:08 exactly. I didn't tattle on you when you gave her all those carbs and give her any insulin. You, oh, man, it must very frustrating in that your whole story is full of frustration. I'm so sorry.

Chanel 1:17:19 No, tell me about it. That's crazy.

Scott Benner 1:17:22 Chenille I have to stop or I have to spend more money on the editing. You don't want to send over money,

Chanel 1:17:27 do you? I don't want to cost you more money. Very much.

Scott Benner 1:17:31 You really, I really do appreciate your conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Oh, of course, it's my pleasure. Hold on one second. You I'd like to thank the ever since 365 for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and remind you that if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every 14 days, you want the ever since CGM, ever since cgm.com/juicebox one year, one CGM. Earlier you heard me talking about blue circle health, the free virtual type one diabetes care, education and support program for adults. And I know it sounds too good to be true, but I swear it's real. Thanks to funding from a big T 1d philanthropy group, blue circle, health doesn't bill your insurance or charge you a cent. In other words, it's free. They can help you with things like carb counting, insurance navigation, diabetes technology, insulin adjustments, peer support, Prescription Assistance and much more. So if you're tired of waiting nine months to get in with your endo or your educator, you can get an appointment with their team within one to two weeks. This program is showing what T 1d care can and should look like. Blue circle health is currently available in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. If you live in one of those states, go to blue circle health.org to sign up today. The link is in the show notes, and please help me to spread the word blue circle health had to buy an ad because people don't believe that it's free, but it is. They're trying to give you free care if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. It's ready to go right now. And like I said, they're adding states so quickly in 2025 that you want to follow them on social media at Blue circle health, and you can also keep checking bluecircle health.org to see when your free care is available to you. Hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com, you.

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