Scott Benner 12/9/24 Scott Benner 12/9/24

#1378 Heading to College with Type 1 - Low Blood Glucose Incidents

Part three of a three part series on going to college with type 1 diabetes.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Joining this three part series on going off to college with type one diabetes today is part three. If you've missed the first two, they're right before this one in your podcast player today, Andrea and I are going to talk about the thing I'm assuming most of you dread the most your child having low blood sugars at college. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is and a US resident, if you are, I'd love it if you would go to T 1d exchange.org/juice box and take the survey. When you complete that survey, your answers are used to move type one diabetes research of all kinds. So if you'd like to help with type one research, but don't have time to go to a doctor or an investigation and you want to do something right there from your sofa. This is the way t 1d exchange.org/juice box. It should not take you more than about 10 minutes. Today's episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. This is the meter that my daughter has on her person right now. It is incredibly accurate, and waiting for you at contour next.com/juice, box. Today's podcast is sponsored by the insulin pump that my daughter has been wearing since she was four years old, Omnipod. Omnipod.com/juice, box. You too can have the same insulin pump that my daughter has been wearing every day for 16 years. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypo pen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com. Forward slash juice box. Andrea, welcome back. I appreciate you doing this with me. Hey, Scott, it's great to be back. Awesome. I am excited because we're going to do an entire episode here today, just about managing lows at college and being ready for them

Andrea Lafleche 2:31
exactly they're going to happen. So why don't we be prepared as best as we can for them? So yeah, I really want to kind of help all of our young adults and the caregivers, especially, kind of a background on what might happen if you're going low. And we'll get really in depth and give you some tips and suggestions, hopefully to give you some more comfort and be able to get your own information to feel more comfortable sending your student off to college knowing that they're they're going to go low.

Scott Benner 3:03
Yeah. I mean, we don't want to not be trying for it not to happen, but we also don't want to pretend like it's not going to happen and then not be prepared for it. And there's exactly more here on your your notes are great, because there's more here than I think I would have thought to say. So dive right in, please. Wherever you want to start,

Speaker 1 3:19
sure, let's just start with lows in general, not like, life threatening, but like, Oh, I'm walking to class and I'm 65 right? It's gonna happen. You're gonna go low on campus, whether that's in your residence hall with all of your things, or when you're out with friends, and in a million other scenarios that could come up while you're off at college. Really, it's your job to be prepared. The number of times I've seen somebody post about not having low snacks or say they never carry sugar with them, I don't want to be judgmental, but also just makes me nervous, like I as a person with diabetes, 99% of the time, always have something on me, because I don't want to be in that situation. And I think college, with everything else that's going on, this is one thing that you can prep for. You can prepare for. Think about how you can be the most on top of this when it comes to having some sort of glucose, some sort of supply with you, as well as wearing a Medical Alert Bracelet. I feel like in one of our previous episodes, we might have mentioned this. I know for many of you listening, this is probably not something you want to do. Maybe even thought about it, especially with the rise in diabetes tech you're wearing it, people see it. Maybe you're making the assumption that people must know I have diabetes because they can see my Dexcom on my arm. They can see my Omnipod. That's not necessarily the case. One the general public might not know what those things are, even though they're becoming more and more prevalent in the media in everyday life, they might not know, and EMTs aren't trained to look for those things if they're coming to help you, whether that's because you've passed. Out, or whether that's because you just need a little extra support with your low blood sugar, people aren't going to be looking at those things to know you have diabetes, which is why I'm very much suggesting finding something that works for you, that either goes on your wrist, your neck or your ankle, because that's where as I've learned this past week, EMTs are trained to look yeah, that you wear something for me, I just have a little tiny thing that goes on my watch band that says type one diabetes. Super simple. You wouldn't notice it.

Scott Benner 5:30
I had an episode a long time ago now with an EMT, because everyone's like, Oh, I have a tattoo that says I have type one diabetes. They do not look at your tattoos. They only run like Andrew just said, your neck, your wrists and your and your ankles. They're looking for that jewelry. That's the only thing they're trained to do. Yeah. Do that right? It's yeah. Do you think you would have resisted it when you were younger? If somebody said, I want you to wear a bracelet or something, if you take insulin or so final ureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G vo hypo pen. My daughter carries G VO, K hypo pen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes ages two and above that. I trust low blood sugar. Emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, GEVO kypo pen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use GVO kypo pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulin OMA, visit, gevok, glucagon, com, slash, risk for safety information.

Speaker 1 7:07
I think the hardest thing for me, I believe I had one, if I'm remembering, and it was not a cute one, like the standard. I don't know if anybody listening to this remembers the like commercials. I think that you could like medical or commercials or, like, I think I got brochures when I was younger, of like, here's all your options, like, the shape that you want and like, but they were all basically the same metal, yeah, with a little cross snake. I can't remember what it's officially called, Caduceus. Yes, that on it. So not great. I think I wore it. The problem for me growing up was I was really into athletics and sports. You can't wear jewelry when you're playing sports. The ON OFF, ON OFF, ON OFF. Thing was difficult, really, the putting it back on. So I think now there's so many other options, like, I wear my watch, my Apple Watch, every day, for the most part, it's already on there. I don't feel it. It's part of something I'm already wearing. So I like that option for me to

Scott Benner 8:07
something that is going to drive you to wear it, not something that every time they look at it, they go, this thing's horrible or shiny or, yeah, right?

Speaker 1 8:16
There's so many other options these days, right? If you're not wearing it, nobody's gonna know you have diabetes, so they're not gonna be able to necessarily think to look for your glucagon if you're having that, or be like, Oh, you need glucose, or let's check your blood sugar, they're gonna probably go to something else, like, Are you on drugs? Are you intoxicated? These types of things, because there's only

Scott Benner 8:35
one college campus that might be more you're on a college campus,

Speaker 1 8:39
and the percentage of people that have diabetes is so low, comparatively right to the regular population, that that's not going to be there. Like, oh, you probably have diabetes. Like, no, you probably have something else going on, right? So this is why we need to, like, let them know. So figure out what makes sense for you. Is my number one tip. But then the sugar thing, like, stash it everywhere, whatever your favorite low blood sugar thing is. Or if you like to have different types of things based on what you're doing, like, if I'm going out and I don't want to bring a bag, I have a small tube of glucose tabs that I can shove in my pocket. I don't really notice it, but you have it and I'm good to go, or if I'm going on some other trek, or I'm bringing my regular everyday stuff, I have a little stasher bag of Skittles in there that's more has more carbs. So like, figure out what works for you. But like, have them everywhere, right? Put them on auto ship, yeah.

Scott Benner 9:36
Juice boxes for are probably easier for women because they have purses, pocketbooks, generally speaking, but guys have to have backpacks too, right? Like at college, right? I'm gonna give you my best tip, and don't all of you buy this and ruin it for me. Okay, do you know Albany's gummy bears? No, they're awesome, okay? And you can buy a five pound bag of them on Amazon for like, 15 bucks. Ooh. So Arden has in her dorm room at all times, a five pound bag of gummy bears. Now you'll never get low enough to eat all these gummy bears, right? So when you go to visit your kid at school, there's always gummy bears there too, which is kind of awesome, but she has them in her room. She knows how many of them fix how low of a blood sugar. Not great at night because, you know, teeth and cavities and stuff like that, but for most of the day, it's pretty awesome. They are soft. They're easy to do while you're half asleep. And then juice boxes, like, we have the kind that Arden like, My best tip about juice boxes is the most sugar you can get in the smallest amount of liquid. Like, that's, you know what? I mean, it's like, I want you to be able to get 15 carbs with, you know, two ounces, if you can, not super healthy, but great for a low blood sugar. I sent four little bricks of them to school with Arden weeks and weeks ago, and I visited her last weekend, and I looked up and there were three bricks, and there were like, three missing. And I was like, Oh, she's not really even, like, using them, you know, she's got a pattern right? Like, things are working the right way, but when she needs them, they're in her purse, they're in her bag, they're next to her bed, not like, across the room, like that kind of stuff. Yeah,

Speaker 1 11:13
no, totally. I have a, literally, just like, an open bowl of Skittles next to my bed, so all I have to do is reach over, half asleep and grab a few. Like,

Scott Benner 11:24
just very Daisy, yeah,

Speaker 1 11:26
literally, just half roll over. Okay, here we go. And I like Skittles, because they're, like, one carb a piece. So if I really want to when I'm awake, know how much I need? Yeah, I can count them out, which is nice, right? Other things, glucagon, glucagon, yeah, go ahead. I mean, I'm gonna be honest. Do I always have it with me? No, do I suggest you do? Yes. I think this is one of those things, like, you know yourself in a lot of ways, or like your experience level, like, had diabetes for 26 years. I've never needed to use a full glucagon. I don't think now is the time I'm going to probably start. But if I'm traveling or I know I'm going to be doing, like, a newer activity, or being very active, I definitely bring it with me. But in college, everything's so new, right? And you really don't know how something that you might typically do at home could impact to be compounded by other new things you're doing that having that on you, because you're going to be away also from home, if you will, like your residence hall room, which would be your home while you're at school. Like having the extra supplies, I think is important, yeah, to have have that with you.

Scott Benner 12:37
I want to be honest, prior to Chivo kaipo Pen being available, and you know, it. Just want to be clear, they're a sponsor of the podcast. That's not why I said it out loud. But prior to that being available, we didn't carry glucagon anywhere when it was the red box, like it was at home and at school. But you know, that was kind of like it. This is very carriable, though, so it's in Arden's bag. She does not leave the house without one. She has them in her room. There's an extra one there. I always think of this way, eventually they go bad. It's the happiest I've ever been throwing anything out in my life. You know what I mean? Like, Oh, we didn't need this awesome and then, you know, like, bring in another one. I'm a fan, and I think too few people even understand what it is. That's why I mention it so much. So, I mean, if you're me, I leave hypo pens around, like a like, Andrea leaves Skittles next to her. They're everywhere. Yeah,

Speaker 1 13:27
I think another kind of thing to think about, and this might be harder for maybe, like, a first semester, first year student. If you end up having a job on campus, or maybe you're you got super involved, maybe you're part of student government or a student activity, or you're often hanging out in x location. So like when I was at school, we had these different centers that you just kind of could go hang out with there open like nine to nine. You could community space, really, but they were staffed. Think about if there's places on campus that you're spending a decent amount of time per week talking to the staff there, especially if it's a job or, again, you're involved in like, a leadership activity, being like, Hey, I'm here 10 hours a week. Would it be okay if maybe it's in their office because they're your advisor or your boss at that job, to be like, Can I leave a set of supplies here? Yeah,

Scott Benner 14:23
what if I just put a juice box and a bag of gummy bears right in this drawer right here? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 14:28
Yeah. So even if say you forget, or you ran low in your backpack, you're going, you know, you have it somewhere on campus, whether you're going there that day or not, just think something to think about, like, what are the spaces that you're in a lot and is that a potential place that you could ask a staff member, who most likely will say yes, if you have that relationship with them, to leave some supplies there that you have access to, whether you're there officially for work or your activity, or that you can stop in during work hours that they're open and. Grab something if just in case you need it.

Scott Benner 15:02
What are your thoughts about and what do you find when people talk about this, their willingness to describe to friends or staff about how their glucagon works and how to administer it if they need it. That's a great question, because I can see people being like, I don't want to tell anybody, and I can see other people not caring and like, you know what I mean? How do you talk about that? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 15:22
I think it's all related to

Scott Benner 15:24
my daughter. Is 20 years old. I can't even believe it. She was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was two, and she put her first insulin pump on when she was four. That insulin pump was an Omnipod, and it's been an Omnipod every day since then. That's 16 straight years of wearing Omnipod. It's been a friend to us, and I believe it could be a friend to you. Omnipod.com/juice box, whether you get the Omnipod dash or the automation that's available with the Omnipod five, you are going to enjoy tubeless insulin pumping. You're going to be able to jump into a shower or a pool or a bathtub without taking off your pump. That's right, you will not have to disconnect to bathe with an Omnipod. You also won't have to disconnect to play a sport or to do anything where a regular tube pump has to come off. Arden has been wearing an Omnipod for 16 years. She knows other people that wear different pumps, and she has never once asked the question, should I be trying a different pump? Never once omnipod.com/juicebox, get a pump that you'll be happy with forever. Far too often, we accept the blood glucose meter that someone hands to us. The Doctor reaches into a drawer and goes, Here, take this one that is that is that the one you want is it accurate? You have no way of knowing. But if you want accuracy, and you want to be confident in the blood glucose readings that you're getting from your meter, you want the contour next gen. It's incredibly easy to get the same meter that Arden uses. Just go to contour next.com/juicebox that's all you have to do. The contour next gen is easy to use and highly accurate. It features a smart light that provides a simple understanding of your blood glucose levels, and, of course, Second Chance sampling technology that can help you to save money with fewer wasted strips. Contour next.com/juice box. You Well,

Speaker 1 17:22
we've talked about before, like your general willingness or comfortability with talking about your diabetes in general, it's actually now that I think about, I'm like, that's not a conversation I've ever had with somebody. Again, I think because I've never really had to use it, so in my head, the likelihood that it will be needed to be used isn't necessarily there.

Scott Benner 17:43
Isn't that funny, like, you wear your seat belt, though. Andrea, right?

Unknown Speaker 17:46
I do. I

Scott Benner 17:47
know you have a car accident.

Speaker 1 17:49
Rarely ever, I don't know. Yeah, right, no, it's the same concept. I think the difference there, right? Is like, there's a social norm associated with safety belts? Yeah, everybody who gets in a car should be wearing them, right? Not everybody has a chronic illness that they have to manage with potentially life threatening fluid and have to manage all these things, right?

Scott Benner 18:12
I'm with you. I like my opinion about glucagon is probably because I'm worried about another person. But you know, I've also been on an airplane hundreds of times. I've never been thrown into the roof of the plane by turbulence and had my neck broken, but I still wear my seat belt every time I'm on the airplane, because I'm like, I I've heard that's happened, just in case. I wonder if we couldn't make it the norm by talking to people over and over again about it, which is why I bring it up so much. Just like I really think if you have, if you're using insulin, you should have it on you. I'd

Speaker 1 18:39
agree with that. I think maybe the difficult thing, or a barrier in these situations is the expectation that conversation might put on that person, or they might feel like, is there, right? And I think, yeah, that depends, right? Am I talking to my best friend who already carries I don't even ask her, but she's like, I got a granola bar in case you need it, because I know, you know, like, she's already thinking about that. And if I was like, Kelly, if I pass out, like, I need you to stick this up my nose and squeeze she'd be like, cool, I got you. But if I'm telling my boss that at my brand new job, I know, right, like, and I'm not necessarily expecting you to do it. But if I, even if I'm just like, hey, I have this. If I go low, it's one of those. You can use this. So some of the nuance of like, how you say or explain, right? And I think like, what setting up expectations of like, if you're not comfortable with that, it's okay, but please call 911, or whatever it is, figuring those nuances out, I think is some of the barrier with the glucagon piece.

Scott Benner 19:41
I don't think you want on your move in day free to look over and see that your mom or dad has like your new roommates pinned on a sofa. Is explained now she passes out. I want you to jam this in her ass. I don't think that's what you want. Obviously, I can just tell you, like briefly, when Arden went to college as a freshman, we took her roommates out for dinner. Yeah. And we said, like, you know, hey guys, look, Arden's going to explain her diabetes to generally speaking, it's going to be a lot of stuff you don't understand. It's some of it's going to be scary. I don't want you to be scared. We brought their parents along, you know what? I mean, yeah. And they said, but this is it. Like, mostly, you're not gonna have to ever worry about this, ever. And we said, what you said, like, Arden's had diabetes for this long, she's only ever needed glucagon, you know, this many twice, and the truth is, we didn't use it. She was saved by juice both times. But if this thing should happen, we don't want you guys to be sitting here thinking like, if this thing that we're almost 100% sure is not gonna happen, happens. The worst I could imagine is them standing there feeling hopeless and helpless, and then something bad happened in art and them feeling like responsible. You're now finding yourself in this situation, whether you wanted to be or not. Your roommate has type one diabetes. I'm trying to prep them for feeling triumphant if something goes wrong. And so we just pulled out a trainer pen, which I was lucky enough to have, it's on my desk somewhere. I don't know where it is or, like, this is how it works. And you know, if Arden's passed out, take this thing, open it up, find a fleshy spot, put it in and then call 911, and then you go, that's really probably not gonna happen, like, you know, like, but here's how it works. It's important. The truth is, Arden said that, as much as they nodded along. They didn't understand, but they did come back to her some weeks later and say, Hey, we don't think we we were talking, and we don't think we understand this whole thing correctly. So Arden went over it with them again, and then they would have Friar drills. So Arden said that sometimes she'd be studying in her room, and everyone would run in. One of them would pretend to make a noise, and then they'd yell, Arden's having a seizure. And then they would pretend like a, you know, and then one of them would go find the pen, and one of them would get to her, and like, they made, like, the dumbest world game in the world, out of it. But then two years later, Arden switched schools, and she moved in, and she was an older person, and she's like, I don't want to tell my roommates about this. And so it was hard for my wife and I, but we said, Okay, if that's what you want to do, then you don't have to tell them. So I've done both things and anyway,

Speaker 1 22:14
and I would hope that every student gets roommates like that, but that's not the case, right? And not to say that they would have bad roommates. It does happen, but they just might not be interested. They might just be roommates. Yeah, right, not all roommates turn into friends, and so the expectation that that is what your student is going to experience that like that have that expectation, but that's a pretty high expectation to go in with,

Scott Benner 22:41
right? You could also get a partially mentally ill person as your roommate, and things go crazy. I've seen, by the way, I've seen that too. So it's a coin flip, just because the thing went well for Arden doesn't mean otherwise, but I really do take your point. It's an incredibly uncomfortable thing, because you don't know who you're talking to. You don't know their level of understanding or their desire to help, and now you're putting something on them and opening yourself up in a way, because you mentioned at work. I mean, that's the other piece of it, right? Like, are you going to on day one in a new situation, signal to people that you're weaker sick, like, you know what I mean? Like, some people will treat you that way, then that's tough, I don't know anyway,

Speaker 1 23:26
right? And it's finding the balance that works for you, and fortunately, slash unfortunately, every situation you step into is going to be different on what that balance looks like.

Scott Benner 23:36
Okay, all right. I'm sorry, you can move on to your to part B, which is labeled worst case scenario.

Speaker 1 23:43
It is right well, because that's what I hear. And I think you've said this as well, Scott, that caregivers and parents and loved ones are like, Oh my god, I can't get in touch with them. Their Dexcom is at what does it even say? Low, double arrows down. They're not responding to me, and I'm 50 miles, I am in no place to help them physically, right? Like, even if you live down the road right, too late, right? You're not getting in that building. You're not getting like, you don't have access. So what's going to happen? What do I do? So I want to walk everyone through, kind of some players, or some people that might be involved if this situation comes up, and then kind of go through what I would suggest doing during and even before to get some more information. So let's say your student is in the residence hall when this happens, because we're usually people are usually worried about this at night, when their student is asleep and they're not responsive, right? So people that potentially will either be around or involved at some point in the scenario, peers, other students, roommates, depending on kind of what the situation is, there's probably other students around, yeah, again, remembering they are also students. We don't know what their relationship might look like. They might be a roommate, they might be good friends. Ends, they could be both. They could just be walking by the room and the doors open and they realize something's wrong. We don't know what that relationship is. We don't know their comfortability or their knowledge around glucagon. Maybe you had that conversation, but they're like, Nope, I don't do needles. I don't care that it's encased and I can't see it. Like, I can't Yeah, maybe they have no idea that your student has diabetes. Hopefully they're going to call someone. Most likely, in a situation like that, they've been told to call the RA on call, or call campus police or 911, so most likely, hopefully, if a peer is involved, they're going to do one of those three things. If they don't know or don't feel comfortable, actually doing something about the low your resident assistant, potentially will could be involved in the situation. They are students as well. They are trained to respond to conflict, conduct violations and emergency situations, along with other more fun things, like community development. What might they do? They're going to gather information in that moment of like what's going on, determine what needs to happen, and take the next appropriate step, which is typically going to be to call their campus police or safety in a situation like this. From my experience working in Res Life and being on call as an RA and as a professional in something like this, I'm going to call campus police and be like, This is what's going on, or 911 again, this will vary depending on the type of school you're at and the resources that are there. And they're going to let them know what's going on. They're going to stay on site until that help arrives, and then they're going to notify the housing professional that's on call, which is typically a resident director or hall director. They have different names, and let them know what's going on and pass on whatever information they have. Housing professionals. There's a few different ones that could be involved in this type of situation, but they're typically when they're rds, full time staff that run a building or an area on campus, and they're the supervisors of an RA staff. If there are students on campus living on campus, there's going to be a professional on call. Doesn't matter if it's Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, if a student is living in a residence hall, there will be a housing professional that is on call. Again, from my experience being that person, the protocols for what the rd do does with that information will vary school by school, and we talked a little bit about previously. You might be able to find some of those steps in the clear report that's published online. But in the case where your student is transported to the hospital, either the rd is going to potentially notify you, if that's part of their protocol, or they might be calling the administrator on call, which is typically their boss, or somebody at like an associate director, director or dean level, depending, again, on The School, and they might be the one to notify you again. Potentially, this all varies based on the state of the student, why the student was transported to the hospital, and in general, again, what is the protocol if you are being called? Most likely, all they're going to tell you is that your student was transported to x hospital. They might give you the number to call. Might give you a number to call. We tried to do that, but I'm really not going to give you any other information, because, again, FERPA, yeah, you're not going to get a lot of information. And then, of course, potentially EMTs campus safety or police, and because of FERPA, we're not, none of these entities are going to be telling you what happened, the state of things, they're going to just let you know that your student was taken to the hospital. Ideally, the number to reach the hospital out to try and get more information, right? So those are the players, and it can be really any kind of amalgamation of those, depending on who's notified, where the situation happens, what's going on.

Scott Benner 28:39
You were an RA in college. I was way back in the day. What's the likelihood that if I, if you know, I knocked on your door during moving I was like, hey, my kids in this room, and she has type one diabetes. Can I get your phone number in case there's an emergency? Would you be like, go away, old man, or what? How would you respond to that? Yeah, I

Speaker 1 28:58
would never give you my number. Yeah, the students, some of them might do it, and then eventually they're going to be like, I shouldn't have done this. No offense to parents, but ones that ask for the RAS numbers typically are going to call, using that are going to call, gonna do things and again, FERPA, we can't tell you the RA, can't tell you what's going on with your student. They'll probably tell me when I was their boss, so and so's mom, so and so's dad asked for my number. We would probably, during training, tell them, point them to us, and we'll have a conversation with them, of, like, why you ask? Like, what do you feel you need the RA's number for? And kind of see what's going on from there. Yeah, please don't ask for the RA's numbers. Again. They're so they're a student too. Yes, they've been trained to support and build community and handle situations. But first thing they are, as a student, I

Scott Benner 29:47
had all of Arden's roommates phone numbers. I never, I never had to contact them. But there was, like, a comfort level, like, you know, in that situation where you think, if you were to get into a situation where, like, there's something wrong, like. It's not just like, you know, I'm imagining someone calling the RA and be like, You tell her to Pre Bolus for her food. Like, not like that. Like, I mean, like, Hey, can you go to that room? I think she's dying like that, right? Like, but if you thought that, people might say, Well, if you thought that, then call 911, except you do not want to be the parent who sent an ambulance to the dorm room for a compression low there's this dance that happens inside of you as a parent, where you're constantly I just a caregiver in general, right? Like, also, I want to say I understand why the RA wouldn't give out their number. I didn't ask the RA for a number, but I understand why they wouldn't. What I'm saying is, if you if everyone could put themselves in the position of, I think it's possible that someone I am charged with caring for is in a dire medical situation. I know it's happening and I'm powerless to do anything about it. If everyone could feel like that for a second, we'd all just hand each other our phone numbers in this situation, like, you know what I mean? Like it's, then it comes down to the one person who would misuse it, and then that's, I guess, why it's, you know

Speaker 1 31:06
that? But also, think about it, they're a student, so they're not unless they're on call when this is happening. They might not be in the building, yeah, they might not be on campus, they might be in class, like, they might not be available, right there. They might not answer their phone, right? They have their own lives, their own things that they have to do. So it's not part of it is, yes, the misuse and the burden of that student potentially dealing with just any sort of question or response, responding to caregiver or parent, but it's also the idea that they might not actually be able to physically help because they're not in that location, right? They might not answer the phone, right? So they're not a reliable resource in the sense of, their job is not to just be available for students. Their job is to be a student and support other students during certain times that they're scheduled, right?

Scott Benner 31:58
So fire extinguisher, they're not hanging on the wall waiting for a problem, right, right?

Speaker 1 32:02
Exactly. Which is more of the bigger reason really, that I'm like, don't rely on them as somebody to be able to communicate back and forth or do these things, because they're not, they're not there. I'm also assuming

Scott Benner 32:13
that at three o'clock in the morning, if you call the RA and you're like, oh my god, I think my kids nine, and the person on the phone goes, Hey, man, what's up? You'd be like, Oh, okay, I've, I've found a high person at a party, and, like, now I'm trying to tell him, my daughter's having, she's like, right on, like,

Speaker 1 32:28
they have their own lives and nothing, right? Like, if they're not supposed to be working, they can go do most things. Yeah,

Scott Benner 32:35
no. And I think it's important to bring up, by the way, to get to that point, which is, it makes sense when you're thinking about it, until in practice, you realize when push comes to shove, it's probably not going to be valuable to have it set up that way.

Speaker 1 32:48
Exactly Okay, which is why I want to go over, what should you do if your student, or if you believe your student is having an emergency is unresponsive? You've done all of the things that you have set up. You've done the Find My Phone, the sugar pixel, whatever the system is, you've done it. You're not getting a response from them. Call campus police or safety. They are going to be the ones that have somebody available to pick up the phone, 24/7 and take your call, look into what your campus has, right? But they should have somebody available at all times. You don't have to necessarily go right to 911, right, give them all the information. You can explain what's going on, and they're going to take it from there. And this is the part where, like, you're going to have to wait, right? They're not going to keep you on the phone. They're not going to necessarily call you back afterwards and say this is what happened. And we found Susie, like, again, FERPA kind of prohibits all of this, so it's gonna, it's gonna be the, probably the longest X many minutes of your life while you're waiting for this to happen. But they're going to take that information and they're gonna go from there, right? Typical protocol, like, if I'm thinking back to my days as campus professional, typically, if it's in the middle of the night, campus police is probably just going to go to the room and knock on the door. They can't get in, they'll have called a housing staff member to come meet them so that we can unlock the door and go in and see what's going on and take it from there and then, depending on what happens, like we've said before, you may or may not be notified. So if they're going to the hospital, and part of their protocol is to notify you, you're going to get that call that says they've been they've been taken to x hospital. Here's the number. Most of the time if the student is not needing to be transported, we're going to tell them to reach out to you. We're not going to call the Yeah,

Scott Benner 34:39
call your mom back, because we're not calling her, right, exactly. Yeah, I would just like to remind people that in this scenario now, this is emergent care. This isn't prophylactic, like you're not trying to stop a bad thing from happening. Once a bad thing has happened, the handling of that thing in a college setting is going to take the time that it takes. It's not. The way you were going to handle it at home, you're going to be in an emergency situation now, and you're going to rely on, you know, 911, type responses, those take time, even campus security. Like, they're not going to they're not Superman, they're not going to fly right over there, right you call, you explain it. They have to get there. They've got to knock on the door. They've got to wait for campus house. Like, it's sad, but you're now in the middle of an emergency situation. It's no longer, I think I can stop my kid from having, you know, XYZ happen to them, right? It's a tough pill to swallow to think that you're not going to be able to get in front of this thing, especially if you've been raising a kid with diabetes for 20 years, and you have over and over again, stepped in front of those bullets and stop those things from happening like you feel like, I know I could get this set up to fix this before it collapses. But you have to understand that you're you don't live in that situation anymore. This is a completely different ecosystem, and this is the best ecosystem will do for you,

Speaker 1 35:55
right? Because, again, if you're trying to rely on roommates, other students, things like that. One, they might not be there when it's happening. Two, we can't really force them to say, Oh, you have to, you have to do this for Arden, let's say, like, yeah, your roommates, like, you have to do No, no. That's not something we can require of them. That's also not something we can require even ask our staff to do I had, actually, when I was a graduate rd in my master's program, I had an RA that had diabetes. I was like, Oh, yeah. Like, and she was somebody that sometimes would have morning lows and wouldn't necessarily wake up. I believe her mom had, like, asked me, or even she had asked me, like, Oh, can you, like, check on me? And I brought that, I felt comfortable with it, right? Like, I have diabetes, like, I get it, like, making sure you're okay. And I brought that to my supervisor as a as I should, and just as a conversation, I was like, I'm good with that. Like, that's right. And they're like, no, like, liability wise, like, that can't be on you, right? Right? Like, just as a school thing, so, like, that's the other thing, right? The liability of putting that on either other students or on really untrained professionals, right? Is probably something the school is going to be like, no, like, that's not. We have to follow our protocol. Martin

Scott Benner 37:07
has three friends. She's grown up with forever, right? And for the entire time that she's been has had diabetes and known these kids. I thought these three girls know what they're doing, but there was a moment when the four of them were together and Arden had a seizure. Like, one of them literally froze. One of them was lost, and one of them was like, I know what to do, but it took three people being there for us to come up with one who was like, Don't worry. I remember this and like, you know, like, did the thing like, but I wouldn't have known how to bet on which one of those it was going to be. In case you're wondering, you know what I mean, like, when it was the one it was, I was like, Oh, interesting. So, yeah, yeah. So even, even if you as a roommate, you allow someone to put that on you, you don't know how you're going to respond in the moment. You really don't exactly, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 37:51
And that's why it's called the trained professionals, right? They're trained and have done handled these types of situations that they're not going to freeze that they're going to be able to think through it right and do what needs to get done. While that might take a little longer, it's still a better option than calling the roommate who isn't there, or calling the roommate who's like, I don't know what to do, and just freezing and then you've now taken x amount of time to get to the people that will actually be able to support your student.

Scott Benner 38:20
But this is an upbeat conversation.

Speaker 1 38:21
I know Yes, and I'd rather you have the information and be prepared right then also feel flustered when you're getting a response you weren't expecting. Yeah, it's not what you want, but it's what to expect. This is an

Scott Benner 38:39
accurate representation of what your experience is going to be like in college with this situation.

Speaker 1 38:44
Exactly. Yeah, okay, and so what are some things that we can do, or that I suggest that you could do if you're really if you're really struggling with this, you're really concerned about the schools process, right? Because, again, every there's nuances to every school, the different things that are in place because of size, because of resources, all of these things, right? Check the Clery report. See what information is in there about their protocols, their general protocols for emergencies. If that's not kind of quelling the anxiety or like is not super helpful for this particular type of situation, what I would suggest you to do as, again, a former housing person who met with parents and dealt with parents and walked them through things, is to speak to somebody in the housing office if your student's going to live on campus. And I would suggest looking into that as soon as your student makes a decision, and especially if that's if they decide in the spring that this is where they want to go, reach out in the spring. Don't wait into the summer. Summer, surprisingly, while there's no students, is very busy for us, right? We're prepping. We have all day trainings for weeks with the professionals, with the students, not that we won't get back to you. We will. Yes, but our schedules are much more chaotic than potentially in the spring. So if you have that ability, go look on the housing website. See who's working there. Look for probably an assistant or associate director, depending on what the staff structure looks like if they have training in their title, even better, just because those are the people that are literally in charge of training the staff, training the RAS on these types of procedures, you could go straight to the director. The reason I say assistant or associate, you're probably going to get a response faster just because they're more focused on specific areas where the director is kind of managing a lot of other things. So they're going to give you a faster response. Send them an email and request to talk to them in whichever way you prefer. Maybe that's email communication. Maybe you want to schedule a phone call, maybe you want to go in person, but send them an email requesting a conversation in whatever format you feel most comfortable with. Explain that you want to learn more about the emergency procedure. My child has type one diabetes. They'll check with your kid to make sure that they're okay with that, and you're wondering what like and then list what you're what you're looking for. I suggest this because it gives the staff time to pull the information together in a non rush manner, making sure you're being connected in the best way possible. You know, even during the school year, like we're running back and forth, it's very easy to play phone tag for a while if you're trying to get in touch with an upper level staff member in housing that doesn't help anything on your side or their side. So that's why I suggest send an email outline what you're looking for, and then that way they can get back to you, either schedule that meeting, or if you just want an email response, they can get back to you that way, and they're not trying to answer your question. Because, right, this is a little bit nuanced, right? It's a very specific, well, it's an emergency situation. It's something very specific. That way they can kind of get things together and give you a succinct answer, instead of kind of being caught off guard by this very like, detailed, nuanced question while they're in the middle of everything, whatever else is going on. So I highly suggest figuring out the best person, send them an email and kind of go from there to get a better understanding of what would happen. And they might tell you, like, this is the number I would call, right? They might give you something more specific based on how their protocol works that you wouldn't get otherwise, if you didn't talk to somebody. But we want to support you in whatever way we can. We can't make exceptions for our protocol if you will, like, if you're like, Well, can you give me the rd on calls number? We're not going to do that most likely, but we want to support you in understanding what would happen to you can be prepared as well in that situation. So that's kind of my suggestion, to get that additional information. Once

Scott Benner 42:50
again, you are awesome. That is excellent, very complete, very clear. I love you doing this with me. Are we going to do more of these? What else is on your list? I don't

Speaker 1 42:59
think I have anything right now? Okay, we did almost everything else. There's one more that I hadn't fully fleshed out, and honestly, I didn't really nothing else came to me. But I think, based on what I'm working on for the upcoming you might have another part in the future for me. Yeah, because there's stuff so I want to do. I'm hoping to do some more stuff on, like caffeine and like ADHD meds if you're taking them on prescribed so, like, we could do some more maybe, like, okay, related things.

Scott Benner 43:30
Yeah, sure.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour next.com/juice box. A huge thanks to Omnipod, not just my longest sponsor, but my first one. Omnipod.com/juice box. If you love the podcast and you love tubeless insulin pumps. This link is for you. Omnipod.com/juice. Box. A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gevok, glucagon. Find out more about Chivo hypo pen at G VOQ, glucagon.com. Forward slash juice box. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juice box. I also want to thank Andrea for coming on and putting together this fantastic conversation over these three episodes. If you'd like to learn more about the diabetes link, the place where Andrea works, go to the diabetes link.org they are there to help your child get through college with type one diabetes. If you're living with type one diabetes, the after dark collection from the Juicebox Podcast is the only place to hear the stories that no one else talks about, from drugs to depression, self harm, trauma. Trauma, addiction and so much more. Go to Juicebox podcast.com, up in the menu and click on after dark there, you'll see a full list of all of the after dark episodes. 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, wrongwayrecording.com, you.

#1377 Heading to College with Type 1 - Caregiving

Part two of a three part series on going to college with type 1 diabetes.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

This is part two of our heading off to college series with Andrea on today's episode, we'll be focusing on what caregivers need to understand about the relationship between the college and the student and how much can be shared with the parent, that and much more in today's episode, 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? Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is and a US resident? If you are, I'd love it if you would go to T 1d exchange.org/juicebox, and take the survey. When you complete that survey, your answers are used to move type one diabetes research of all kinds. So if you'd like to help with type one research, but don't have time to go to a doctor or an investigation and you want to do something right there from your sofa, this is the way t 1d exchange.org/juice box. It should not take you more than about 10 minutes. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast. Private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast, type one diabetes. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by cozy Earth. Use the offer code Juicebox at checkout at cozy earth.com and you will save 40% off of your entire order. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by touched by type one. This is my favorite diabetes organization, and I'm just asking you to check them out at touch by type one.org, on Facebook and Instagram. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, a company that's bringing together caregivers and parents of children with type one. Later in this episode, I'll be speaking with Sarah, Mom of Jackson, who's an active 10 year old boy with type one. Sarah is married with two children and a recruiter at a law firm. Thanks to Medtronic Sarah and her family found the support of the Medtronic caregiver community valuable in their journey. Hey Andrea, welcome back. Thanks for doing this with me.

Unknown Speaker 2:25
Hey Scott,

Andrea Lafleche 2:26
no problem. I love being here.

Scott Benner 2:27
Cool. So in the first episode, we talked a lot about accommodations. That was actually a really great conversation about accommodations. But today we're going to pivot a little bit. What do you

Unknown Speaker 2:37
want to talk about

Andrea Lafleche 2:38
today? Sure I want to talk about now. I titled this for caregivers, but definitely important for students as well. A little more about some general laws or things that schools have to abide by that will help you give some more context when you're dealing with institutions or professionals. And then talk about some suggestions, really from me and my experiences of, you know, supporting your students and how to help them advocate for themselves and work with the institution, since that role is really on them. Now, they're they're 18, or they're a college student, regardless of their age, and these things are kind of on them. Now,

Scott Benner 3:15
can't you just do what I did and say, you know, if you want to go to school and me support this. You'll let me come to this meeting. Or can I you could?

Andrea Lafleche 3:25
I don't know how great that is for your relationship. I guess every every parent and their students relationship is different, so that might, that might be something, and I'm sure your student might want you there, but once they're fully a student and they're on their own there, we're not calling you, right? Your student might call you and be like, can you talk to Andrea in Student Conduct? And I'm going to answer the phone and say, Do you have a FERPA waiver signed? Oh, they don't. The student needs to come in. Or they told me I can't talk to you about that. You need to talk to them. So

Scott Benner 3:55
you've had to say that to a parent. You've had to say, Oh, you want to know about this. Your student told me not to tell you about this. Is that true? Has that happened? I mean,

Andrea Lafleche 4:06
I haven't said it like that, but basically, yes, like your student told me to the student told their parents, and the parents called me, and I'm like, well, there's no FERPA waiver on file, so I can't I can't call, I can't talk to you. You need to have them sign that

Scott Benner 4:20
you were polite. I see I got you

Andrea Lafleche 4:23
some I'll say some of us, some of us are like, no FERPA. I try very hard to speak in generalities, because I can and talk about, this is our general process. If something like that were to happen, this is what would happen, or this is the general direction, or the general outcomes of something like that, especially if I was talking about student conduct, but never would I get into a student's file of any kind unless I had that that signature from them saying that they can I can talk to their parent, which is why I generally suggest that parents and caregivers support their students. By talking to them and supporting them in having those conversations on their own, or finding the information and supporting them being their own advocate. Excellent. But for those that don't know what FERPA is, if they didn't hear our little spiel in the first episode, FERPA is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Some people call it the HIPAA of higher education. Similar vein, your parents will be used to this from their child's high school or middle school, elementary school, where they do have access right to their students files. That changes once a student goes to college, whether they're 18 or not, the student then becomes the eligible student, and all the rights of FERPA transfer from the parent to the student. Okay, by

Scott Benner 5:50
the way, you just said, even if I'm like, somehow I get into college early. I'm like, 17 and a half, I'm in college. That's it, correct. Okay,

Andrea Lafleche 5:58
okay, age does not matter at this point.

Scott Benner 6:01
So if I find myself on the phone yelling at somebody going, I pay for this. You can tell me what they're great, that kind of thing. It doesn't matter. Correct.

Andrea Lafleche 6:07
Gotcha Correct? Correct. Now, student, the student, can give consent for information to be shared, but they can decide who and what information. So a lot of schools in like, the financial aid portal might have, like, a section where this you can say yes, like, you can talk to my parent about the bill check signed good to go just because they say yes, you can tell my parent about financial aid or the bill that I have that's not giving the right to everyone, right? So if they end up in a conduct situation or something's going on in housing that form doesn't apply to the other areas of school, they will have to give consent to that office to talk about that situation. And they can be as broad with their consent, or as narrow they can say, yes, you can talk about this situation that happened on this day, today with my parent. And once today is over, the consent is revoked, right? And that consent can be revoked at any time. So just because they did it once doesn't mean that it's forever, which is something we run into as well when parents are calling so something to think about. Pretty interesting. Actually, there are some exceptions. So if somebody does a deep dive or goes and Googles and goes on the government website, they might see that there are exceptions to FERPA in emergencies related to drugs and alcohol if a student's under 21 however, that's at the discretion of the school. It's not mandated that the school says during these incidents, here's the information you need. It's more of a you have the option. So I've worked at a variety of institutions. Some were very much like FERPA, everything is under it. It does not matter if it could be an exception, we're not going to do that. And some are like no part of our process is if somebody violates the drug policy or the alcohol policy under 21 we'll call the parents, we'll notify them that this happened, give them that information, because we are able and move on. So if you have multiple children going off to college, you could have different experiences with FERPA at your schools. Okay? Because it's a you can, not a you must, right?

Scott Benner 8:10
I understand. So you might get the Hey, Mrs. Jones, it's Andrea. Come get your heroin addict. We don't want her here anymore. Yes, in other places, your kid could be have done something illegal, been arrested on campus, and no one's going to tell you or have any reason why they need to. This episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, and this is Sarah. Sports

Speaker 1 8:30
are his life. He was nine years old. He was just starting to develop his own personality and his own passions and his own independence, and instantly we were afraid that that was going to be taken away. It was a very scary time for me. I would say probably the first couple weekends, there was a lot of fear about what happens if I go low. Obviously, now that we're on Medtronic technology, what we do managing his diabetes during athletics, has changed drastically. The Medtronic technology that we are using has almost eliminated the fear I have while my child is playing.

Scott Benner 9:04
As far as community goes, have you met other people with diabetes? What's some good advice you've gotten from them?

Speaker 1 9:09
I have met so many people with diabetes. This summer, I had the opportunity to meet others that are using electronic technology, and I feel like we have built such a strong connection because we speak the same language, we don't even have to say what we're going through. I have good friends that are Medtronic mamas that I can reach out to that have been incredibly helpful, and then our Medtronic rep has been phenomenal

Scott Benner 9:37
to learn more about the Medtronic champions community and to find helpful resources and tips for caregivers and families. Visit Medtronic diabetes.com/parents-caregivers, friends, the holidays are here. You need a gift, and you don't want to look like a cheapskate, but you're also not trying to spend every last penny you have. I got you covered. Cozy. Earth.com use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 40% off of everything that you put in your cart that's cozy. Earth.com use the offer code juice box at checkout. I'm talking about swanky, swanky, comfortable, beautiful sheets, bath towels, clothing, anything you can think of that when you you in your mind's eye, you close your eyes, you say, I want to be comfortable. I don't want to be hot. I don't want to be cold. I don't want to look like I bought this at a second hand shot, but I don't want to spend so much money that my head explodes not looking to buy, you know, the high falutin stuff. But I want nice, I want quality, and I want a deal. Here's the deal, cozy earth.com use the offer code juice box to check out, save 40% get yourself some great stuff, or give them as wonderful gifts at the holiday Correct. Gotcha. Okay, all right.

Andrea Lafleche 10:57
So just some things to know. If you are gonna call the school and ask questions, depending on what's going on and their kind of stance on it, you're going to get potentially a different experience. Can

Scott Benner 11:06
I ask a question that's not going to be specific for like, the people listening? Don't apply this to your situation. This is just me. I'm interested. Yeah. Do you think professionals that do what you do, like, I know that's the law, so that's what we do, but do you think they wish that wasn't the law. I mean, my, I guess my question is, is, don't 1819, 20 year old kids still need their parents sometimes, or is that not the case? Like, what's your finding? Seriously? Like, personally, sure,

Andrea Lafleche 11:30
I think it's so hard and it's so nuanced, because I would like to think that the majority of college students have a good relationship with their parents, and that they can go to them that they made a mistake now they have to deal with the consequences, and then that's not going to blow up their whole life. But we know that, unfortunately, that's not true. I kind of can see both sides. I appreciated when I worked at a school, and specifically when I was doing conduct that I if I was able to talk to a parent about, like, a drug or alcohol thing. I think for the majority of students, I don't want them to get to a place where they're on the cusp of being expelled and their parents have no idea. I think that's more hurtful for them. But I think sometimes too where we are now, right? I've seen a lot of different parents styles as I've been in higher education, right? As I said bulldozer earlier. That's kind of the era we're in. I had probably more what we termed helicopter parents, a little less of that, as I was earlier in my career. So it was like a different conversation. But for me, and the reason I got into higher education is like providing a space where students can learn outside the classroom as well, right? They're really in this environment with other their peers. They're doing things outside of education, outside of like academic education, and they're able to make mistakes and do these things and learn from them. And I think sometimes, unfortunately, we're in an era where parents want to fix

Scott Benner 12:59
a lot of things for their child, not let things unfold and grow, right? And

Andrea Lafleche 13:05
not Yeah. So I think there's definitely some situations where, like, if I'm able to notify in an emergency, I definitely want to, I would ideally be like to be able to do that as one of the exceptions. But in general, it's another tool. We kind of have to work with the student to help them learn how to take accountability and to own up to their actions for themselves at the school and with their their parents or caregivers, because they have to be able to gain those skills of like, yeah, I screwed up. How do I how do I go about owning that with my family?

Scott Benner 13:36
I would imagine, too that there's some like, if you grew up in a good situation, you wouldn't know this, but there are probably some parents that are holding their kids back too, right? Like, it's not, like, Leave It to Beaver. Everything's not all great. These people, these kids, are finally at school, and they're like, Oh, I'm safe. I'm good. Like, I don't have this happen anymore. I don't have a drunk person yelling in my ear all the time or whatever. Then you go reintroduce them to I got you. Okay? All right, I'm sorry. I appreciate knowing that. Thank

Andrea Lafleche 13:58
you. No, that's great. The other thing that I want everyone to know about, students, parents, caregivers, is the Clery Act. Have you ever heard of this? Scott, no, no. Okay, it's a law. Comes from Jane Cleary. I'm remembering correctly. She was a student at La Fauci in Pennsylvania. I won't get too much into the history, but basically, because of her death on campus, there has been a law and some requirements around that law, including an annual safety report and annual fire report that schools must put out every year that goes through a litany of basically what kind of incidents, what things are happening on and near campus, putting together report and the data. There's a lot of different nuances to it, but every school is required to post this on their website. So if you're concerned about maybe a location, your student is looking at a school going to or you're like, oh, that seems like it could be dangerous or not really sure what's going on there. You can just search it in their website. It'll pop up. The reason I bring this up is not necessarily. For those incidents, but more for this is going to provide you all the emergency procedures that a school has, okay, right? So you can get a better understanding if you're nervous, what happens if there's an emergency on campus? Where might they take my child if they have maybe a low blood sugar? It's going to list all of the hospitals in the area. It's going to give you a lot of information that you might find beneficial. As you're looking at schools, right? Instead of doing a Google search, you can just look at this report, and it'll give you a lot of information about, again, emergency procedures, hospitals, emergency phone numbers. So if you're like, shoot like, Who do I need to call if I'm worried about my child not responding to my texts in the middle of night because their Dexcom says they're low, right? You can already have that information ahead of time, yeah, so you're not feeling like you have to search for it. I think it's a great tool not many people know about that can give you information about the campus that you're considering or the campus that your child has decided that they want to go to. I looked

Scott Benner 15:58
it up real quickly, so they published an annual security report. Schools must publish an annual report detailing campus security policies, safety procedures, crime statistics for the previous three years, which includes crimes like assault, theft, sexual assault and hate crimes. They have to do emergency notifications in a timely fashion. They're required to issue timely warnings about crimes that pose a serious or ongoing threat to the students and the staff, they have to post the crime statistics. It mandates that schools collect, maintain and report accurate crime statistics, categorized by location, on or off campus, public property around the around the campus. Rights and resources for cases involving sexual assault. The Clery Act requires schools to provide resources and outline rights for victims, including counseling and information on reporting options and disciplinary procedures. And the Act specifically specifies that geographic area for which the college must report the crime stats, which includes on campus buildings. This is why, when my son was first in college, we were told that there was like a it's gonna sound crazy, but like a freight train that stops near the campus, and it was known to be involved in human trafficking, like that train line, and that we were made aware of that. And I was like, why would someone just that's such a random thing? It felt like for somebody to tell me, but that's this. They didn't tell me. If they wanted to, they had to. Oh, cool, pretty much, yeah, I got it, yeah.

Andrea Lafleche 17:17
So yes, you can get a great picture of kind of what's happening, like you said, crime stats for the last three years, but then all of this information about procedures we get, in my experience for the last two years, with the link talking to caregivers, they're very concerned about, you know, emergency procedures. What would happen? Who do I call? So this is a easy thing to find, because it has to be so public that outlines all of that for you, instead of trying to kind of piecemeal things together yourself, highly suggest checking this out. Okay. All right. Thank you. Yeah. All right. So let we kind of dove into FERPA. So I want to talk a little bit about what I think, and this is me, personally and my experience, some things that could be helpful to help your student get the support they need, since you can only get so far as a parent now, now that they're off to college, you can only get so far. We can only say so much to you. And really you're not you're not physically there, right? And it's just a good skill for young adults to have to be able to advocate for themselves in a variety of situations, figure out who the best person is to talk to. So while it might be really tempting to pick up the phone and call me about whatever's going on, whether that's a roommate situation, a conduct situation, their accommodations, I really want you to think about what is a different way that you could support your student. And you know your students best, but things that come to my mind is asking them if they want support finding the best person, right? If they're at a large school, maybe they're not connected yet, because they're a first year student and they're just like, overwhelmed with, who would I even talk to about this issue with? See if they want support from you finding out who that person is, right? Help them do a web search. Or if they're like, Yes, can you please just find the person that I need to talk to do that piece and be like, I think this person makes the most sense, and just get them connected to one person as a student affairs professional. While we all have our niches, I worked in these specific areas. I'm going to be very connected to the other professionals on my campus. I'm going to have knowledge of the other resources, the other offices. So if you find me, for example, and Arden comes to me and is like, I'm having this issue. Hey, Arden, I can't personally help you with this, but let me get you connected to my friend Kelly. She works in this office, and I know that she will be able to help you with this concern. And most likely, I'm going to bring you to that that office. I'm going to connect you via email, whatever is most comfortable for that student, but one of the ways that you can help them, instead of picking up that phone, is just helping them find the information. Maybe they are worried about not saying the right thing or explaining the issue correctly, or they're really not sure what to say. Maybe it's more of Do you want to run through this conversation? Do you want to write down some talking points? And I know for me when I'm nervous or I'm going into a conversation that might be uncomfortable, even now, as a professional, I'm going to write down my talking points, like, that's something that helps me. Maybe that's going to help your student. Maybe they will feel more comfortable if you kind of brainstorm what questions might be asked, or like, what information is important about the situation to share with the campus professional, and they'll feel more comfortable going into the conversation that way.

Scott Benner 20:26
We just had this at home. Arden needed information from, uh, from an office at school. She texted me. She goes, I do not know who to reach out for this, so I said, Okay, so I figured out who it was, and I said, it's this phone number, this email address, this person. I sent it to her, and I didn't hear back from her. But then the other day, she said, I emailed that lady, and I haven't heard back from her. And I said, Well, maybe you should call her, because younger people are very afraid of the phone. By the way, a lot of people, not just younger people. I don't know what it's happened to all of you, you know. So I said, Well, if you want a faster answer, you should call. And she goes, now I'm gonna email again. I said, Okay. I said, go ahead and do that. But that whole process, because we're not rushing, it's the thing we're doing for the future, doesn't feel like, oh, we have to know right now. And it does teach her, like she just sit down and compose the email she had to see that people don't always respond right away and reach so she's having a learning experience and and the thing that we need done is still going to get accomplished, you know, just right? Yeah. And

Andrea Lafleche 21:23
I think these are all the things about going to college, that's the learning outside the classroom. And if we're trying to do it for them, they're not going to have that experience for when they eventually have to do it in their future job, or they're not going to feel as confident and giving them those options, right? Like, maybe I didn't know that, like, I could call them, right? Or maybe the phone number isn't available, right? Schools put out information in different ways, depending on who's logging into their system. You might need to be a student to get access to that phone number, just giving the option, like, oh, you could call them, or have you thought about going to the office, right? So maybe they call, they didn't get a response. They left a voicemail. They didn't get a response. Okay? Like, what do you want your next step to be? You could try these things again, or you could go to the office, or, let's see if there's another person that we can get you in touch with, right? And just helping them kind of think through it instead of doing it for them, is so valuable in that moment, and I think down the road as well, right, for getting them on that road of independence. Very nice.

Scott Benner 22:22
Okay, listen, I agree. It's the unintended consequence. I mean, you brought it up for a reason, so you must see it all the time, right? But it's the unintended consequence of like, what you described, like parenting right now sometimes leans more towards, I'll take care of it, we'll fix this, that kind of thing. And you're stopping the kids from having these problem solving experiences. And I get it because you You also could get run over, because every look, if everybody else's mom is out there fixing it, and your mom's not fixing it, it's possible they're getting ahead of you because of that. And I get the pressure behind that. But you know, to me, it's like preschool. If no one sent their kid to preschool. None of us would have to send our kid to preschool. It's the first one of you that was like, I want my kid to know how to count on day one at kindergarten. You messed it up for all of us. I hope you're happy. But you know what I'm saying? It's good. Yeah, I like it.

Andrea Lafleche 23:12
And they're, I would say they're only going to get ahead for so long, though, oh yeah, it's

Scott Benner 23:15
gonna, it's gonna fall backwards on them at some point, because they're gonna get into a real adult situation where you're not although I know this is probably apropos of almost nothing, but my wife once interviewed a person in a job interview, like a person in their 2324 year old range. My wife asked some sort of question during the course of the conversation, like sitting in her office having this conversation, the person says, Oh, I don't know the answer to that. And my wife was about to go, that's fine, you know, like, I'm, you know, it's fine. She goes, my mom knows, though, I can go ask her. And my wife goes, your mom is here. And she goes, yeah, she's downstairs waiting for me. And my wife, like, picked up the paper and wrote no in the corner and then continued politely to have the conversation. She brought her mom to her job interview.

Andrea Lafleche 23:59
Oh, I'm not surprised. Yeah, that's, that's a big thing that's happening these days. I

Scott Benner 24:03
can't believe you're not surprised. That's, that's fascinating. Anyway, yeah, that's crazy, absolutely the craziest thing I've ever heard, apparently, not the craziest thing you've ever heard. But go ahead. Move definitely not move forward, please. Yeah, I

Andrea Lafleche 24:16
think in the same vein, talking about boundaries with your student, your student hopefully talking to you about them before, but I also believe that they probably won't. Is important, right? And doing that as you're I mean, the sooner, the better. But let's just say you're at the college search process. We're starting that now, maybe start talking about them while you're doing the search, right? And because I think that they they relate as well to all the things we've talked about before, right? You're thinking about, what does the mail system look like? What does getting you medication look like? And so these conversations about, not necessarily innocuous things, but these lesser stress potentially things as you're doing the search can. Help facilitate this boundary conversation of like, okay, so it seems like the mail would work for us to get you your insulin. Like, do you still want me to order it? Or do you want to tell me you need it and then order it? Or do you just want me to take care of it? Right? And, like, bringing up boundaries in these small, maybe bite sized, very situational things. If this is not typically something that you're having conversations about, or you don't feel particularly confident in using these as opportunities to kind of build that into the conversation and get better and better at it, so that when you're like, Oh, it's this, do we have three months until you're leaving? Okay, maybe we need some of these bigger conversations about what does contacting you when your blood sugar is low look like? If that feels like the big, scary conversation to have? Oh,

Scott Benner 25:47
I think if you and I don't do an entire episode about what to do in that situation, we'll be letting people down. I think that's all that people are worried about. To be perfect. What happens if my kids drunk and has diabetes, and if their blood sugar is low and they're sleeping and they won't wake up. I bet you, that's most of their concerns. So definitely,

Andrea Lafleche 26:03
yeah, yeah, we can definitely hit on that a little bit in a second. But think about how can you weave boundaries into these little conversations? Again, if it's not your typical go to, like, if you're that's not something you're currently doing with your child, how do we make it easier and kind of set, figure out the little the little boundaries, if you will, to help get to the bigger ones, and know that they might change, right? And know like as like they're supposed to as your child grows and gains more independence, and you kind of trust more that they've got this but use the little things you're talking about as they're searching to have those conversations, I think is a great place to start and maybe even testing some of those things out, right? So if we're talking about sharing or not sharing, I will completely admit sharing was not a thing when I was in college. CGM were barely a thing. So this is not something I have personal experience with, but comes up often. So does your student want something different than what's currently happening while they're in high school? Do you use their senior year or even their junior year? Like, let's test out how that goes as a trial period when you're still kind of in your same routine, have the same supports that you're used to. Does it go well, okay? Like, let's consider implementing that. Did it not go well? Why didn't go well? What can we adjust to hopefully get to where they want to be eventually, so that everyone is safe and everybody feels as confident as they can sending their student off to college? Yeah,

Scott Benner 27:31
very nice. Oh, that's a lot to think about, isn't there?

Andrea Lafleche 27:34
There really is.

Scott Benner 27:36
Most of it hinges on pre planning, though it really does. Like, as you're talking, I keep thinking like, if you're a person who's like, I'll cross that bridge when we come to it, you're going to come to a lot of bridges that are washed out. But if you plan ahead, you're going to find ways around that miles before you ever get to it. And it's nice, because how would you know otherwise? Really, you know what I mean. Andrea, like, if you're not here talking about and I don't have experience that I'm sharing in house. Anyone who's the first time are gonna know to ask about stuff like this, or wonder about these things, or like, the littlest ideas that, like, you know, I'll bring up some other things that I you know, as they fit in the conversation, but there's things I've learned along the way I never would have imagined. So

Andrea Lafleche 28:16
even for those, like, for first generation college student completely like, where do you even start? But even as a parent that's gone to college before, you probably didn't go with diabetes one, and even if you did, when I just realized this, when I went to college, I pretty sure I couldn't even get accommodations under the ADA because they hadn't changed what was considered disability until 2008 so maybe my senior year. I guess I could have tried, but diabetes and stuff wasn't really covered under the ADA the same way that it is now. So you're still even with experience. Things are so different now that you're kind of starting you're starting over in a way, like just because you had the experience doesn't mean it's the same or that you're thinking about the same things that your child with diabetes needs to think about.

Scott Benner 29:07
In hindsight, would you have been better off with those accommodations?

Andrea Lafleche 29:10
I think so, and I'm definitely a person that's like, diabetes doesn't stop me. I will do whatever I want with it, in a way, right? But looking back, there was never a time that I was, like, super low and couldn't take an exam, but I can definitely see that. I think I would have done better academically if I had had the ability to have some of these accommodations. Do you think

Scott Benner 29:32
it would have just lifted a weight, like, is there like a din of noise at the back of your head that goes away when you know you're safe in these situations, so even if they're not a problem, you're not worried about them.

Andrea Lafleche 29:42
Yeah, I think definitely not having to think about like, if I was going low and I actually remember a time. And luckily, I'm the type of person everybody knows. I have diabetes, my pump sites, my Dexcom. Like I wear them wherever I want. I don't care if they're showing. Entire like, that's just me as a person. I'm very comfortable talking about it to anybody and everybody. Like, ask me the question, whatever, I'm here to talk about it. So my professors knew, my friends knew. But I remember being in an American Sign Language class, and we were in the final and luckily, my TA was my friend, because we had a substitute professor that day, and I remember sitting watching the professor sign, and we had to, like, write what she was saying, or, like, interpret it, or whatever. And I'm like, why can't I, like, I don't understand what she's signing at all. And it was, like, super basic, like, I know this stuff, right? And this was pre CGM, so nothing's alerting me that I'm going low. And it finally clicked on, like, Oh, I think my blood sugar is low. So I was able to get the attention of my TA and like, I'm like, I'm going low. I need to, like, have a snack, whatever. And so luckily, she was able to explain, and like, everybody was super accommodating to me in the moment of, like, I took care of it, I came back, finished the exam, and then she, like, re signed the stuff that I had missed, and it was fine. No big deal. But I can't imagine, like, what that experience would be like if it was a much larger classroom, right? Like, there's only maybe 15 of us in there. We all knew each other very well because of the type of class it was. But if that happened in my econ 101, 300 purse lecture hall. They're not most likely like, I don't know the professor that well, especially if I never needed to go to office hours or whatever. So I could definitely see it potentially hindering me in the moment. But knowing, like, the amount of time that maybe my blood sugar was high, my blood sugar was low, and I couldn't focus on whatever I was studying, or those types of things. It would have been nice to kind of have that, that backup plan, if you will, official backup plan,

Scott Benner 31:51
because I can see people hearing this and coming at it from both ways. Like, you know, diabetes, like, there's plenty. Listen if you want to watch an argument online, go ask about getting in line sooner at a theme park, if you have diabetes, you'll get large group of people will come in and argue, half of them, I'm not disabled. This is you can do it, and they're gonna be somebody goes, Look, my blood sugar drops out. I don't know why. It just does. You know what I mean? Like, and they'll fight about this over and over. And a lot of people don't want to be called disabled. I understand that as well. Yeah. But having the the ability to just put a few things in place, I don't know they're, they're like, smoke detectors, like, I don't really expect my house is ever going to burn down, but if they do, I've got smoke detectors, and that makes me feel better, like that, that kind of, that's how I think about this. And if something does catch fire, then great, I'll know ahead of time. I'll have a plan, I'll get out, I'll be okay, and we'll deal with what happens next. That's just sort of how I think about this. Like I said, Martin's had a 504 plan throughout her schooling years. She had accommodations to the first school she went to, but I have to admit, when she switched schools, we didn't do any because we already knew how it all worked and everything and like, and she's like, I don't really need any of this. And we said, Okay, I said, even about testing and everything. And she said, let me try it without first. So I said, Okay, and now we're doing it that way, and then we're going to reassess at the end of semester and try to decide if she feels like she needs anything added in. I think she puts more time into creating conversations with teachers and letting people know where she's at so that if something happens, they can kind of deal with it like that. But I mean, that could backfire on at some point too. So I'm glad I did it. I don't think she won't do it again. But without it, I'm not scared anymore, I guess so, but that's comes with experience a little bit.

Andrea Lafleche 33:34
So yeah, it's all personal, because, again, we're all individuals. We all deal with our diabetes differently. We are coming into college with different comfortability, of like, navigating that transition, I'd say specifically with diabetes. So yeah, if you don't want to do them, we're not going to seek you out, right? That's the other thing. Like, right? I might even see somebody with a Dexcom V I'm not going to be like, hey, Debbie in Disability Services. Can you please contact this student, like June? Like, No, nobody's No, I cannot, right, right, so nobody's going to reach out to you about that. But, like you said, like, it's good to have the just in case, just in case.

Scott Benner 34:13
I wish she did it again the next time, but, and I think she might in the future, just things were kind of rushed, and I guess it brings up the point that we weren't able to pre plan that gotten it got in the way. But I'll tell you right now, one of the things that it caused an issue with immediately is she went into housing. It kind of had suites, and then the suites had bedrooms, but the bedrooms were private, and so the minute the door closes, it's locked from the inside, so no one can get and you need her card to get into the room. So that's it. Arden's locked in a concrete box at night when she's sleeping. And I'm like, what do we do about that? Exactly, you know what I mean, like, if there's a real problem. And then you come to the realization that if I don't have something in place, the only thing I'm going to do about it is call 911, it's the only option I have. So, you know. That I wish we would have thought through a little clear. But anyway, good. Is there anything else on this piece? No,

Andrea Lafleche 35:05
I think, I think that's kind of, you know, it's teach their own but, yeah, excellent. Since you brought up the concrete box that nobody can get into, that kind of brings up what you said everybody's nervous about, which is their child going low and nobody able, like, who's helping them. Yeah, right. And that's definitely a concern. I think you've talked in previous podcasts and different things, kind of what you've done previously with roommates, and then you suggest, you know, telling, at least tell the roommate, and at least let them know what glucagon is or what to do, type situation. And I think that's great. I, for a variety of reasons, always suggest if a student can not be in a single at least their first year, don't put them in a single. Don't give them a single, not even diabetes wise, just like growth and meeting people and community, highly suggest roommates, they'll figure it out. I promise. Right,

Scott Benner 35:58
right. Yeah, not feeling alone is a big deal when you go away to college. It really is. If you get stuck with like a crackpot, then that's a little more difficult. But like, you know, generally speaking, we

Andrea Lafleche 36:09
will help you with that, right? We don't want you to have a bad roommate situation. And I would also from, again, my work experience, not always the best. If you're going to school and you have a friend from high school going with you not always the best to room with them either. I will almost guarantee there's a there's a likelihood you will no longer be friends after, after rooming together.

Scott Benner 36:30
You know, what I've seen a lot is one of them wanted to be roommates, but the other one didn't have the heart to say no, and then it builds like resentment. So anyway, good yeah. Good point,

Andrea Lafleche 36:39
yeah. So highly suggest just get a random roommate, or, like, a lot of times now you can, like, there's almost call them like, matching services, right? You're putting in information, and the school is kind of matching you as someone that makes sense based on routine and major and different things like that. Cool, but if it doesn't work out, they will help you just talk to the staff. That's why we exist, is to make sure that things are going well, right? But if there is an emergency concern, you look like you have a question, Scott,

Scott Benner 37:05
you made me just think we could be rich. Andrea, why are we not starting an app like housing, Tinder, or something like that? Because

Andrea Lafleche 37:11
it already exists. Oh, okay, not necessarily an app, but the systems exist.

Scott Benner 37:16
Oh, it has to be like, What a great because I'm going to my son who went into college as an athlete, and so he knew all the guys that were coming in that year to play the sport. They got into a group chat. They learned about each other, and then very naturally, they started kind of quietly picking each other and then splitting off and having different conversations. And I remember my son came in one day and he said, Hey, I'm in a room with this guy my freshman year, and he said we have very similar interests. And he went over a number of different things, and he's like, even we, like, think similarly politically, he goes so like, he's like, I think this all works. And I was like, I was like, go for it. But then that was the example, too, that there were two young guys. They both knew they were the right ones, but not one of them would like, do the thing. So it's like, just text him and say that and see what he and he texts back and goes, Oh, I was thinking the same thing, but I didn't know what to say. So they both were thinking the same thing. Neither of them spoke up that boys, you know what I mean,

Andrea Lafleche 38:11
general, it's vote it's a vulnerable thing to be like, Hey, I feel like we're a good fit. Yeah, because what if they're like, No, no way. Like, you know? So it seems easy, but it's not, because then you're either with this person or you have to see them, and you have this awkward conversation too.

Scott Benner 38:28
Oh, I remember you. You wanted to room with me, and I don't like you at all.

Andrea Lafleche 38:32
I think you're crazy. Yeah, great. Orientation is a good time to do that, because typically orientation is happening potentially before you're putting in your housing stuff. Again, every school is different how they're doing this, but yeah, just a personal thing. Try not to room with a friend. You think it's going to work, and I can almost guarantee it probably won't. Yeah, so hey, yes,

Scott Benner 38:54
from my experience with two, only two kids in the end, if you either are or aren't a drinker or drug user. Do not match yourself up with the opposite person. It is not going to go well, right? Greg, just like birds of a feather in that situation really makes things go easier, from what I've seen Anyway, yes, yes, no, I agree. Andrew, while we're talking about the things that people worry about that aren't really on your list. There's a statistic you've been out of the game for a while now, though, but about half of college students will try drugs while at college, and about half won't. That's an interesting statistic, because I bet if you ask people, they wouldn't think that it's a coin flip. Have you ever heard about those stats? Or No,

Andrea Lafleche 39:37
I haven't, actually. But I'm not surprised. Okay, not a lot of things surprise me, especially when it comes to college students. That seems legit. I guess my question about the stat is, are they including marijuana, or are they excluding that from the drug category?

Scott Benner 39:56
She's like, wait, they don't all smoke weed. I don't know. Well,

Andrea Lafleche 40:01
I would assume they're including marijuana, which makes that a very believable statistic to me. They could be not and I would still believe it. Well,

Scott Benner 40:09
yeah, I mean, not to be scary, but like, cocaine is pretty popular right now, right? You still in the game? Do you? No, I don't mean like, are you doing it? I mean, have, I meant through your professional endeavors? Have you heard because you said you were involved, you're involved you're involved in student discipline issues.

Andrea Lafleche 40:23
I was yes, I'm

Scott Benner 40:25
sorry. I'm laughing because she looked at me like, are you What do you want me to tell people?

Andrea Lafleche 40:31
Yeah. I mean, I've been out of, as you say, the game, for probably a year and a half now. I did some contract stuff. I would say it depends on where you are, what your drug of choice that's going to be popular is one marijuana across the board. I mean, it's legal in many places now, so that is going to be on basically every college campus. And I will say for those young adults that are listening to this, if it's legal in the state, it's still not allowed on campus, because campus is governed by federal law when it comes to this. So none of those campuses are going to be like, Yeah, cool. You can have marijuana if you're of age, like you can have alcohol. They're not going to most likely, in my experience, if your foul, if you are documented for having marijuana on campus or using marijuana on campus, most likely this was going to treat it like you're underage drinking, in my experience, but you still can't have it. If something

Scott Benner 41:24
gets legal, you're not covered just because, like, it's legal in Jersey, like, and you're in Jersey, right, correct. I found the data, by the way, it said, Okay, great. A significant number of college students initiate drug use during college years. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, approximately 1326 full time college students. Ages 18 to 22 start using an illicit drug on an average day. And then it says this statistic does include marijuana use, so Okay, also it includes alcohol. But it's funny because and it says, to a lesser extent, other illicit drugs. But crazy as it sounds, I find that to be an uplifting statistic, like, it means if you send your kid off to school, you have a 5050, chance of this not becoming their lifestyle. And I think everyone thinks that's what's going to happen to their kids when they go away.

Andrea Lafleche 42:12
Interesting, yeah. I mean, this is very anti, I would say anecdotal, potentially, maybe there's studies on it. Also, I lived this in a way like, I think those students that are going to college that are very sheltered or that this is not something we talk about at home, this is not something that you can experience. It's like taboo. No, no, no, no, no no. This is awful, are potentially more likely be like, Oh, look at all this freedom I have. I want to try everything. Yeah, and those that not that the parents or caregivers are giving them permission to go drink underage or use drugs, but that it's not a taboo, and I will give from my own personal experience. I think also for me, the diabetes played into like, I don't know what that's going to do with this. And like, I don't want to f up my life.

Scott Benner 43:02
I don't want to be double unconscious later tonight. Yeah, yeah,

Andrea Lafleche 43:05
right. So, like, that was a me thing. But like, I also grew up in a way that, like, when I was 16, my grandmother was like, Oh, you're 16. Like, do you want to try a watered down cocktail? Like, right, sure, no problem. You don't mean it wasn't like this. Like, no, you can't like, This is

Unknown Speaker 43:21
bad. No.

Scott Benner 43:22
I mean, from my perspective, I fully agree with you. I think when you pen kids up, not just kids anybody, when you pen somebody up too much and then release them, they are going to naturally wonder what it is they hadn't been seeing. And I, I'm with you on that, so okay, I hear you. I like

Unknown Speaker 43:38
it, yeah, yeah. I

Andrea Lafleche 43:39
think again, it's the nature of college, like you're going to try things. It to me, the more important part is, do you have the support, whether that's at school or at home or both, to learn from the experiences you decide to partake in, and have the resources to determine if it's a positive thing for you or a negative thing?

Scott Benner 43:59
Yeah, right. Because

Andrea Lafleche 44:00
anything, well, I would say there's probably no positive in cocaine use. I don't know, but doesn't seem I like

Scott Benner 44:06
that. You're not willing to say for sure. That's excellent. You're like, Listen, I don't know.

Andrea Lafleche 44:10
I don't know, not something I've partaken in, and I don't know how many studies there's been, so Right? There's all of these things about marijuana usage and alcohol and with anything chocolate, right? With anything, there's a spectrum of how you're using it, why you're using it, and how does it impact you? Is it impacting you negatively, or are you having a positive experience from it? And you're able to live your life like, who am I to judge what things, yeah, do to what people and how you use it, right? Like, there's a reason marijuana is being able to be legal across the country. There are positive things associated with using it in certain ways. Okay,

Scott Benner 44:50
I'm not into telling people what to do. I just assume that if you're an adult who drinks, you assume your kid's gonna go off to school and drink, and if you're from a household where nobody drinks. You think, oh, my kids aren't gonna drink because we don't drink. I just think it's nice for people to know, like, it's possible could be a coin flip. Yeah, you know. And at the same time, I sometimes I see people online. They're like, Look, I know my kid's gonna go off to school and drink, and I want to know how to manage that with diabetes. And I'm like, do you really know? Are you just worried they're going to like, I still want you to under like, because can you imagine if your kid had no reason to think about drinking, and you pulled them aside one day in a lovely mother son situation and were like, Here, here's the rules for drinking with diabetes. And the kid was like, I wasn't going to drink. You don't like, I don't know. It's a and at the same time, I see them needing to know, because coin flip is it might happen. So it's kind

Andrea Lafleche 45:37
of the same thing as the accommodations you want them to have the information in case they do make that decision, right? Because the likelihood is they're making that decision in the moment, not like pre planning. Oh, in two weeks, I'm going to go to this party, and I plan on getting smashed, right? So I'm going to do my research now and make a plan now. They're like, No, we went to the football game, and my friend offered me a beer, and I decided, You know what? I kind of want to try it today. Yeah,

Scott Benner 46:02
no. Same idea. Like, right? Like, Andrea looks nervous, and her friend gives her, you know, a joint. And the next thing, you know, I didn't, I wasn't planning on smoking weed today. Like, and here I am. I'm trying it. So I got you, I agree. Okay, I'm sorry. Are we done with this? Are we good? You like this? I like this? Excellent.

Andrea Lafleche 46:18
Yeah, I think maybe we'll save the We Can Do Not right now. But do you want me to plan to do a more deep dive of the low blood sugar thing? I think you're right that. Yeah,

Scott Benner 46:29
I think we should put one, just one together, just about that. Okay, okay, all right. Well, we'll leave people with that for now, so that they can expect that coming in the future.

Speaker 1 46:37
Okay, excellent. You. Sarah's

Scott Benner 46:45
story so genuinely encapsulates the experiences that so many caregivers go through on a daily basis. Our Juicebox community knows the importance of caregiver support so intimately, and Sarah's story is just a great example of what caregivers go through on a daily basis to learn more about the Medtronic champion community and to find helpful resources and tips for caregivers and families. Visit Medtronic diabetes.com/parents-caregivers cozy earth.com. Offer code juice box to check out, save 40% Listen to my words. You want to be comfortable, you want to look nice. You want to project an air of confidence about yourself. You can do this at cozy earth. You can also get yourself some lovely gifts for friends and loved ones without going broke. Touched by type one sponsored this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Check them out at touched by type one.org on Instagram and Facebook. Give them a follow. Go check out what they're doing. They are helping people with type one diabetes in ways you just can't imagine. Are you starting to see patterns, but you can't quite make sense of them. You're like, Oh, if I Bolus here, this happens, but I don't know what to do. Should I put in a little less, a little more? If you're starting to have those thoughts, you're starting to think this isn't going the way the doctor said it would. I think I see something here, but I can't be sure. Once you're having those thoughts, you're ready for the diabetes Pro Tip series from the Juicebox Podcast. It begins at Episode 1000 you can also find it at Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu, and you can find a list in the private Facebook group. Just check right under the featured tab at the top, it'll show you lists of a ton of stuff, including the Pro Tip series, which runs from episode 1000 to 1025 I want to thank you so much for listening and remind you please subscribe and follow to the podcast wherever you're listening right now, if it's YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or any other audio app, go hit follow or subscribe, whichever your app allows for, and set up those downloads so you never miss an episode, especially an apple podcast, go into your settings and choose, download all new episodes. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com, you.

#1376 Heading to College with Type 1 - Accommodations

Part one of a three part series on going to college with type 1 diabetes. Featuring Andrea Lafleche.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Today, I'm joined by Andrea. She has a specific set of skills that will help you understand sending your type one off to college. This is part one of her three part series. 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. Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is and a US resident, if you are, I'd love it if you would go to T 1d exchange.org/juice box and take the survey. When you complete that survey, your answers are used to move type one diabetes research of all kinds. So if you'd like to help with type one research, but don't have time to go to a doctor or an investigation and you want to do something right there from your sofa. This is the way t 1d exchange.org/juice, box. It should not take you more than about 10 minutes. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com

Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, a company that's bringing together caregivers and parents of children with type one diabetes. Later in this episode, I'll be speaking with Stacey, a mom of a 12 year old daughter with type one. Her experience is an all too familiar one. After losing a lot of weight and drinking more water than was considered normal, Avery was diagnosed. Stacey and her family were suddenly thrown into managing diabetes without any medical background, and Stacey had a chronic condition of her own to manage the Medtronic champions community really supported them during this uncertain and overwhelming time. Thanks to Medtronic Stacy and Avery, found the support they needed us. Med is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and we've been getting our diabetes supplies from us med for years. You can as well. Usmed.com/juice box, or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number get your free benefits check and get started today with us. Med. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. G vo hypo pen. Find out more at gvoke, glucagon. Com, forward slash Juicebox. Hello,

Andrea Lafleche 2:43
everyone. My name is Andrea lafleche. I have had type one diabetes for 28 years, and have worked as a higher education professional for about 10 prior to my time currently as the program manager at the diabetes link. During my time in higher ed, I worked at a variety of institutions, mostly in residence, life, Student Conduct and Title Nine, and now I focus my time on supporting the diabetes link college student chapters, bringing new members into our network and around education involving having diabetes, going to college, being in college and transitioning out of college. Awesome.

Scott Benner 3:21
How long you've been at this? For a decade more?

Andrea Lafleche 3:24
Yeah. So I started my first career, if you will, back, I say, in grad school in 2010 because I had an assistantship where I worked almost full time while doing grad work in Residence Life, and then continued until I left full time higher ed work in December of 2022 to come over to the link to kind of combine my two life and passions, if you will, having diabetes. My sister also has diabetes. So it's a family thing. Working with college students or young adults. I really love that age group. So this is kind of a nice transition to do both the

Scott Benner 4:01
family business. That's interesting. Yes. So you have some thoughts to share with people, we're going to break them up into categories and make them into smaller episodes. So where do you want to start? I

Andrea Lafleche 4:11
would love to start with accommodations. I think that most people are nervous about them. It's, you know, a confusing thing, in a way, especially if you have a 504 or some sort of accommodations in high school. How do you transition that over to college? Because, you know, once college happens, students are no longer just students. They're adults to the college world, whether they're 18 or not, once they're enrolled, FERPA covers them. Us as professionals in higher ed, we're not really allowed to talk to parents without your student's permission, so the accommodation piece kind of is the most confusing and concerning for people. So I think we should start there.

Scott Benner 4:50
Okay, FERPA is Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, yes,

Andrea Lafleche 4:54
okay, you kind of think about it a little bit kind of like HIPAA for higher education. Once a student either reaches 18 or attends an institution that's post secondary education no matter their age. So they can be 16, they can be 17, they become an eligible student, and their rights go under

Scott Benner 5:12
FERPA. Gotcha. So your kid cannot remember to take a vitamin and go to class at the same time, but they are in charge of everything else,

Andrea Lafleche 5:19
according to the government. Yes, perfect.

Scott Benner 5:22
I bring it up because I see how frustrated people become around that at times. I just worth mentioning. I understand it legally. I understand I mean, they're over 18, right? So, yep, yeah, okay, go ahead. Accommodations. Where does this begin? For me, my kids got type one diabetes. They're in high school still. I think they're going to go on to a college. When do I start thinking about this honestly

Andrea Lafleche 5:44
when you're starting the school search, a lot of this that I'll talk about is actually connected, I would say, to when you're thinking about and choosing a school, because accommodations under the ADA can vary between the schools, right? So an accommodation that would be approved has to be reasonable, it has to be necessary, and it has to be appropriate for the diagnosis or diagnoses that the student has now reasonable is going to be different based on each school okay, because of things like access to The funds to provide that accommodation the types of maybe building. So one example, some schools might be in a place where they have historic buildings, and those historic buildings

Scott Benner 6:30
are might not have an elevator, or something like that.

Andrea Lafleche 6:33
They might not have an elevator, they might not have a ramp, and they can't make any changes to that building because it is historical. So if, for example, your school, your student is in a wheelchair, they're not gonna have class in that building. So maybe the accommodation is to move the class to a different accessible building, but they're not gonna be able to put in a ramp, right? These are things to kind of think about as you're touring schools, what you need for your student, because not every accommodation is going to be able to be made in the way that it would at a different school.

Scott Benner 7:07
Just because your need is real doesn't mean they can meet it correct, not just because they don't want to. Right?

Andrea Lafleche 7:14
It has to be necessary, reasonable and appropriate, and the reasonableness comes down to the school in a lot of ways. Right? Is it reasonable for the school to do that, whether that's financially, the physical space that they're able to provide the student? So those are things to think about. While you're on campus, maybe touring or you're looking into schools, you can always go and talk to Disability Services. They may be called accommodation services at the institution before you're a student, and they can give you some general information, but these are things you want to think about prior to picking a school if you're able

Scott Benner 7:48
top of your mind something that you've seen that's not flexible, that applies to type one diabetes. Like, what have you seen them say, like, I need this and the school go, I can't do that.

Andrea Lafleche 7:59
I'm not sure with the and I have a list of kind of suggested things to think about. The only ones that would really potentially not be able to happen is really when it comes to housing. And not everybody asks for housing accommodations, especially in the sense of, like, single room versus whatever traditionally is given to students your first year, right? Typically, once you get up in age, you're picking your own room. But many of these that we kind of have a suggested to ask about, whether that's breaks during exams, minimally distracting environments, being able to use the restroom. The only thing is really, potentially, the housing and we'll get into like, why housing accommodations can get complicated. Definitely seen that firsthand. And then priority registration. That doesn't mean like, I'm a first year student and I get to go first above upperclassmen, but maybe priority in your class of students is if you're going into a program that's basically like pre selected and everybody's getting the same schedule right. So there really is no need for priority registration. But I think most of the accommodations that somebody with type one is going to be looking for should be accommodated in some way, because they're not really asking for a space to be changed or things of that nature. Yeah,

Scott Benner 9:20
we had a very unique thing, and I'll tell people how it worked out. So if you take insulin or Sulfonyl ureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G vo hypo pen. My daughter carries G vo hypo pen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes ages two and above that. I trust low blood sugar emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypo pen can be administered in two simple steps. Even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use jivo kypo pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gevok, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulin OMA, visit G VOQ, glucagon, com, slash, risk for safety information.

Speaker 1 10:36
Avery was diagnosed before Thanksgiving. I had scheduled what we hoped was my last surgery. They were making my colostomy permanent. We had scheduled the surgery when she was diagnosed. I was there the entire time. Her dad came up for one day of training. I was really the only one who could manage but I couldn't take care of her in the state that I currently was in. I never really took time to heal. I went right back into waking up every two hours to check her sugar. She was very inconsistent extreme lows and extreme highs. My mental health went downhill very quickly. Medtronic technology specifically gave us so much and took some of that burden. It allowed my mental health to truly start to get better. I was sleeping again. I was doing all the things I used to as was she What else did you find helpful? I became part of the Medtronic champion community. My daughter and I have gotten the opportunity to meet amazing people. My daughter now has friends all over the country that she communicates with. I now have people that I can truly just check in with, and I feel seen, and I feel understood, and I feel heard, I feel validated. I also just have friends that get it, having that camaraderie between children, but also between parents. It's wonderful. Once we were with Medtronic, it was like our world opened up.

Scott Benner 12:03
Visit Medtronic, diabetes.com/parents-caregivers, for more. Arden went to a school when she was a freshman, and the school was spread out across the city, basically, and you had to ride a bus to get from place to place. So we thought, God, is she gonna have to carry insulin with her all day, and an extra pump and everything, just in case. Because what if she's a bus ride away from, you know, we're in the middle of class, etc. So we asked the question, could we strategically put insulin in a couple of school buildings around the city and a couple of extra pumps so she'd never be too far from it if that happened, and because they were older buildings, they said, We don't have refrigeration like that, and we can't safeguard the insulin there. And so the question became, well, what do we do? And the school came back to us and said, Here's what we'll do. If Arden ever gets into a situation where she suddenly is without a working insulin pump, she can call this phone number. Campus Security will come pick her up and basically Uber her back to her building, wait for her to change her pump, and then take her back to class. We never did that like it never actually happened, but it was an example of how we worked around a limitation at the school anyway.

Andrea Lafleche 13:11
And that's an awesome example, Scott, because again, another thing to think about, what is the layout of your campus being across town? What does transportation look like? And I think that's a very, kind of very good compromise that the school came up with. Like, how can we work with this? We can't make sure that insulin is there, right? Like, you can't dedicate a staff person necessarily, if they even had refrigeration. But how can we mitigate the travel time, which is really, like, the issue, right? That was the issue you're dealing with. So how do we mitigate that campus safety, they're always available, perfect. It really reminded

Scott Benner 13:43
me of that experience when you were explaining all this. So okay, I'm sorry. I'm gonna let you jump into your no

Andrea Lafleche 13:48
no. This is good because you've had the lived experience of having that child go and kind of navigate this. I've been on somewhat of the other side, and this is why you want to think about these things when you're looking at your schools, what are some of these interesting situations that could come up, and how might we deal with them? And can we ask our school to kind of support us in dealing with those situations? This is also why we talk about registering as like as soon as you make the decision, start getting your stuff to or start before you decide because you need documentation from your providers. You know, even if you have a 504 in high school, that's not going to be taken as documentation that you need accommodations in college, you need actual letters and documentations from your provider about diabetes or any other diagnoses that you have that could require need accommodations and doing that process as soon as possible, especially if you're going to be asking for housing accommodations. And like you said, Arden never needed to use that accommodation, but you had it. And that's another important thing about why we always suggest students to register. They're not retroactive. So accommodations are not retroactive. So if I have midterms coming up. Yeah, and my blood sugar is 40 the morning that my exam is in 20 minutes, and I can't get there, and I don't have an accommodation for my diabetes. If I miss that exam, I miss that exam, I can't then go to my I mean, I can go to my professor, and they might be nice, but that's hit or miss, right? And it's not that they're not nice, it's they are teaching a class of 60 students, and,

Scott Benner 15:20
yeah, they can't accommodate your problem, right, right?

Andrea Lafleche 15:24
They can't make an exception for you. Yeah, right. You can't. Then go to the accommodation staff and be like, Hey, I missed my exam. I have diabetes. Can you get me to take the exam again? They're going to say, No, we're sorry. We don't have any accommodations on file for you, but we can start the process now. Yeah, and anything moving forward, you'll have these accommodations, but they're not retroactive. So really, like you said, we want to have them in place just in case.

Scott Benner 15:47
They're like, the in case of emergency, break glass box on the wall, which, now I'm maybe sold that people don't know what that is, but that's not the point. We put together all these accommodations for Arden, and we never touched any of them. Like, never even the thing about having security come, she's like, I think I'd be embarrassed to do that. So she just like, you don't even mean like, she's like, I'll do it if I have to, but I don't think I'm going to you do have to see, though, the balance between being prepared for a thing that might happen the school's perspective of some people coming in there and asking for way too much and them not knowing your situation well enough to know what is like a flight of fancy from you and what is really necessary, like they don't know if what you're asking for really is like, I'd like a Ferris wheel, because it makes my diabetes happy, you know. And there are going to be some families who take advantage of this system, and that might make your job of explaining what you need more difficult. I that was been my finding.

Andrea Lafleche 16:42
Yeah, I think that this is why I think it is required that the staff look at each case individually. Like, if you ever have you go to your school and the accommodation staff is like, Oh, you have diabetes, here's your list. Like, this is what you can have. It's not really how it should work. You should be sitting or the student. Really, parents know, I mean, if the student wants you there and they're allowing that's one thing, but they should be going through your individual documentation, working with you about what makes sense for you and your accommodations. It's not a this diagnosis gets these things. This diagnosis gets these things, and that's what you get. It's an individualized plan per person? Yeah, no, it's a good point. We obviously have some suggestions of things to ask for that we think makes sense. But you do know your diabetes, you do know your body, you know other diagnoses that you have and how those might interact.

Scott Benner 17:32
But be careful, because the school might have a cookie cutter list that's not really going to help you. And if you believe they know what they're talking about, just accept it, then you might be stuck.

Andrea Lafleche 17:41
I mean, I've only worked at a handful of institutions at this point, but I haven't come across that in my work. Most of our the programs I've been at are like, you send the students. They have an individualized meeting. They're going over the documentation and figuring out what makes sense again, what's necessary, reasonable and appropriate, and going through that way, you shouldn't be getting a list. I just want to kind of put that out there, because every school is different. That shouldn't that's not how it's supposed to work. You're supposed to get individualized accommodations. Because even though I have diabetes and Arden has diabetes, our diabetes are different in some ways, right? And what we need? So just be aware that that's what should be happening. But again, it's necessary, reasonable and appropriate. So you can come in with a giant list of wants. If you don't have the documentation to really say, like, why you need that and why that is necessary for your diagnosis, they're going to be like, we're not. That's not a thing that you need, right? So just be aware that that's, again, why you need to get the documentation from your care providers, whomever you're using, and you can you're seeing multiple people related to your diabetes bring in multiple sets of documentation about your diagnosis and what they suggest you would need. Yeah, awesome. Again, the sooner, the better. It's a lot. It can be a long process, right? Because you're having these individualized meetings. They're going through your documentation and figuring out what's best for your students. So the sooner you decide your school and you get that documentation, the better it's going to be. Especially, like I said, if you want housing accommodations, and we can kind of go over some of the things that we think are good things to ask for and why, but housing specifically. And as someone who worked in housing for at least half of her career. It's up to you what you think is appropriate. Housing wise, if you're looking for a single or a specific maybe you go to the school and you realize, okay, only one housing option is close to the dining hall, and that's important, because we want to have access to food as quickly as possible, just in case, right? The sooner you get your accommodations in and approved for those types of things, the more likely it is you're able to get your housing accommodation for your first semester, because you're not the only one asking Correct, right? There's limited spots depending on what kind of accommodation you're in need of and get approved for. And we're not moving other students, right? So as students register. And things fill up depending on the housing process. Once they're full, they'll they're full. If you get an accommodation approved, you'll go to the top of the wait list for sure. But we're not kicking out another student that either has that accommodation already. We might have given away all of those types of spaces or other accommodations to you might not be able to get it right away, which is why, again, doing this process as soon as possible, getting that documentation together ahead of time, even if you're doing it before your student decides which school they're going to because maybe they're picking between two or three, they're not sure. But getting that together so as soon as you're ready, you can drop that in and get the process going. That's really important. Why

Scott Benner 20:39
don't we go over the things that you unless you were going a different way. I'd love to hear about the things you suggest that people look into Sure.

Andrea Lafleche 20:45
So on the housing side, as well, outside of types of rooms you're looking for a single for certain reasons, look at what is their fridge policy. So if you're going into a traditional style residence hall that doesn't have any sort of kitchen in it that would come with a fridge, or maybe you're going into a suite, but it doesn't come with a fridge. Look at what their policy is, and is that going to work for your student? Right? If it's a one fridge policy, maybe you do think it's best for two because of the medicine you might need to be bringing in. Maybe you're on insulin, and maybe you're on a GLP one, and that needs to be refrigerated, right? So you have a bulk that needs its own space. Thinking about that as an accommodation, I would say air conditioning, my housing. Friends will hate me for this, but I know my blood sugar does not like to be hot. It does not love heat. So what is the climate of the place that you're going to and what is the air conditioning? Older buildings or just typically, more traditional style residence halls don't have AC so looking at is that an accommodation that you can get for your your diabetes? Because, again, we know there's so many factors that go into managing it, those are probably the two biggest ones, I would say, for housing outside of a specific type of space.

Scott Benner 22:01
Before you jump forward, let me add about the refrigerator thing. Arden has one of those soda can refrigerators, so it really is just built to hold like a six pack of cans. Basically. It's very, very tiny, and she keeps GLP in it and insulin. But we had to get an okay for that. You've probably heard me talk about us Med and how simple it is to reorder with us med using their email system. But did you know that if you don't see the email and you're set up for this, you have to set it up. They don't just randomly call you, but I'm set up to be called if I don't respond to the email, because I don't trust myself 100% so one time I didn't respond to the email, and the phone rings the house. It's like, ring. You know how it works. And I picked it up. I was like, hello, and it was just the recording was like, us, med doesn't actually sound like that, but you know what I'm saying. It said, Hey, you're I don't remember exactly what it says, but it's basically like, Hey, your order's ready. You want us to send it? Push this button if you want us to send it, or if you'd like to wait. I think it lets you put it off, like, a couple of weeks, or push this button for that. That's pretty much it. I push the button to send it, and a few days later, box right at my door. That's it us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get your free benefits checked now and get started with us. Med, Dexcom, Omnipod, tandem, freestyle, they've got all your favorites, even that new islet pump. Check them out now at usmed.com/juice box, or by calling 888-721-1514, there are links in the show notes of your podcast player and links at Juicebox Podcast com, to us Med and to all the sponsors. And it's just like a little 110 like, plug into the wall, doesn't make any noise. I don't even think it has an air compressor in it, like, kind of thing, like, and we still had to get an okay for that. So, yeah, check. Because what you don't want, right, is for someone to do an inspection of the room and go, Oh, you can't have that. You'll work it out eventually, but in that time, you know what I mean, like, are they going to be like, unplug your insulin? I don't know, you know. So yes,

Andrea Lafleche 24:03
yes, we again, also an RA did all this when we do room inspections, if something's not allowed, especially an electrical device, we're unplugging that because it's a fire hazard. Again, some of these rules and regulations are in because of the types of buildings you're living in. So older buildings, the amount of capacity that they have for electrical things, wattage, all these things. These are all things that are taken into consideration when the school is putting in these policies. It's not just like, we don't want you to have extra fridges because it costs more money. It's like, No, you're going to overload the system potentially, and we're going to have no power. We're going to have a fire, or something bad is going to happen, right? So look at those things. Different buildings might have different policies again, because of age. So asking these questions of your residence, Life staff, of the accommodation staff, even before you're going to the school, we are very adept to handling these types of questions all the time, right? You're trying to make a decision call or send an email. How they're gonna respond to you, and they're gonna be happy that you're trying to do your due diligence so that they don't have more work on the back end. They'd much rather you ask and get things in place beforehand, right? Okay, so other things to think about that you can ask for, and most likely, the institution is going to tell you, could be an option, but it's always helpful if you come in with a wish list, rest breaks without penalty, or what we would call like stop the clock. So if your blood sugar is going low, it's a timed exam. You want to be able to not actually have more time to take it, but you want to be able to stop the test taking time until you are at a place where you can function back at your baseline, to function appropriately, to continue that test. Right? So some people get, like, time and a half because they maybe need more time based on their disability. This is more of a you get 90 minutes, but the time that I'm low or the time that I'm high doesn't count in that 90 minutes, yeah, you

Scott Benner 25:52
get a timeout. Yeah, yeah. Basically, yes, you're

Andrea Lafleche 25:55
taking a time out, right? Stop the clock is stopping taking a test in a they call it a minimally distracting environment, and not necessarily because the person with diabetes needs less distractions, but we can be distracting to others, yeah, the beeping, the vibrating, the snack wrappers, whatever it is, so kind of helping not distract other students, right? That also kind of helps with having the stop the clock, right? You're not in the classroom that only has 90 minutes, and then another class is coming in, right? If you had to stop that clock and you need 30 more minutes, because that's how long it took you to go from 50 to 100 and feel good to take the test, you then have another class coming in, right? So that's not going to help you either. So kind of putting those together is helpful. I'm

Scott Benner 26:40
even seeing a situation where maybe your kid's blood sugar is falling and they know, I can open this cliff bar and eat it if I wanted to, but it's going to be loud and I don't want to bother people, so the next thing you know, your kids low because they didn't want to be a problem. And, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay,

Andrea Lafleche 26:54
exactly. Yeah, this one's a big one, and can be nuanced depending on a few factors. So we'll go over those permission to keep electronic devices at all times. But I think the biggest thing we're seeing now is phones, right? Your phone is a medical device for many of us, whether that's because your CGM is on it, or now with new technologies such as the Moby through tandem, pretty much not the only way, but the way that you can do all of the features for your pump right? Andrea

Scott Benner 27:20
two days ago, Omnipod five, just their app, right? Yep, yeah. App just dropped on Apple. So iPhone, yeah, the phone really

Andrea Lafleche 27:29
is a medical device now and people, that's probably going to be the hardest thing to get people to understand, just

Scott Benner 27:34
the problems that the phone is also a cheating machine. Is that the problem?

Andrea Lafleche 27:39
Yeah, I think it's distracting, right? Like, how many of us have gone to this and they're like, please silence your phone, and then six minutes later, somebody's getting a phone call, and you're like, the guy just said it like, you didn't check, like, right? So it's distracting. It's definitely a way people that cheat, as someone who did academic dishonesty cases, students use it to cheat. So those are, like, the two biggest things. So helping, having your doctor help in the documentation, understand how your phone is a medical device and why it is necessary to keep it. Now, keeping it, I think, is where we get the variety of what does that mean, and coming up with what is acceptable and why. Keeping it doesn't necessarily mean that you have it on you. It's in my pocket, right? This might mean it's in the room with you. It's on the professor's desk, it's on the Proctor's desk, it's in the room that you're taking the exam, if you're doing it in a different place, but it might not be on you, right? But it's still within range where it's getting all of the signals that it needs to get. It still can alert you if there's any issues, things like that. So just because you're keeping it doesn't mean you're keeping it on you. And like, what does that look like? And that could differ depending on what the situation is. Right. Are you in a lab class where they don't allow phones, but you're not taking a test? So like, I can just have it in my pocket if I need to check it. Or is this during exams I need it, but it can't be like at my desk, or it needs to sit on my desk so the professor can see it and see that I'm not cheating on it, or it's sitting on the desk, whatever that looks like. So understanding there needs to be some conversation about what the permission to keep it actually means, like, what is the definition of that in certain situations? My

Scott Benner 29:18
finding with Arden's experience there is that eventually the teachers, they build a rhythm with you, and then one day, you bring the phone to put it on their desk, and I go, sorry, just keep it. You kind of get past that. But I've seen all that proctoring, you know. So Arden's taken proctor tests where she was so young still that she wasn't completely involved in her care all the time, like if she's taking a test and her blood sugar was rocketing up from adrenaline, for example, like she's got her phone silence, it's off to the side. So like sometimes I'd watch her blood sugar while she was taking a proctor test, and with an eye on not interfering, if not completely necessary, the phone stayed with the Proctor, and then if Arden needed something, diabetes. Diabetes wise, I'd send a text to the phone that would say, she needs to stop for a second to handle a diabetes thing. And then the proctor would stop the clock and say, hey, you need to do something. Hand her the phone, let her do the whole thing, or to hand the phone back. And then the clock restarted and went again. So it does work. It's just, you know, it sounds, probably sounds crazy to people when they're listening to it, like the phone's here and it's there and it's there and it can't be on my desk. But it really does work out. And I think at this point, people have been using phones for medical reasons for long enough, I don't think anybody's gonna be like, What are you saying? Like, I don't think they're gonna, you know, be taken by surprise by this anymore, right? It's

Andrea Lafleche 30:35
just figuring out what that accommodation looks like for the setting that you're in, right? Because the other thing will be smart watches, right? Like, I wear my smart watch, I have my blood sugar on there, but I also get texts, I get all these things. So what that's another thing to consider, if you're a smart watch, where they're probably not going to let that, that's going to be a rule in your exam as well. Like no smart watches. This will get also a little more complicated if you're going for standardized tests. So thinking about some of you might have already done that, a CT or the s, a t when you're going to college. But even more strict, I would say, than that, is if you're taking any exams to do

Scott Benner 31:12
graduate, l set stuff, those kinds of things. L

Andrea Lafleche 31:15
sat, MCATs, gmats, all of those are even stricter. So if you're a student listening to this, or a parent of a student that wants to do that, really start those accommodations through those test preparers way in advance to figure out what that looks like. And for your example, with watching and then texting the phone, that's not probably something that's going to be an accommodation, if you're thinking about that for your student in college, probably not something. That's

Scott Benner 31:41
a thing. Scott worked out Andrew, that's all. But let me say this, it is an example of having a really good relationship, because back then, I know that sounds crazy to people, but Arden was taking a big standardized testing when she was, like, in ninth grade, and like, all these algorithms didn't really exist yet, and you were still kind of bumping blood sugars around and doing stuff like doing stuff like that. They knew how this worked, that Arden and I kind of managed her blood sugar in tandem through texting. We didn't text often, and the fact of the matter was, there were times she took the asset. I never responded. I didn't have anything to say, but once I said, Hey, how do we work this out? Because we had a good relationship, it was easy in a quick email to work it out. You know what I mean, like? So my experience with all this has been that if you don't seem crazy at any point, that's really valuable to you. Because the minute the institution looks at you and goes, Oh my God, they are going to ask for a Ferris wheel, you kind of get put on, like another side of the ledger in people's minds. So I try avoiding that at all cost. But go ahead,

Andrea Lafleche 32:42
I want to help all of my students. I definitely dreaded some phone numbers that would pop up on my phone because I knew who it was. And like, we've had this conversation 12 times, and I can't say it any other way, or like, you need to talk to your student and yeah,

Scott Benner 32:59
all I'm saying is, don't be that phone number on Andrea's yes caller ID, where she goes, Oh no, no, no, yes, that's all I'm saying, right? We

Andrea Lafleche 33:07
can't, like, as a student affairs professional, we got into this job not for the money, but because we enjoy working with young adults, like, trust me, not the money, as many people in education know. And we want to help your young adults, we know the value of them being in this kind of middle gaining independence, figuring out who they are situation, and we want to support them in that. And sometimes parents are a lot and like, I'm not a parent, so I'm not gonna pretend that I understand what it's like to let your child go five miles down the road or 500 miles down the road, because I haven't had that experience yet in my life. But at the same time, they're not going to get any benefit from you trying to bulldoze whatever's going on. And I will definitely talk about some other ways I suggest supporting them.

Scott Benner 33:54
I think the words you just used there should reflect to people how serious this can be. On the other side, like bulldoze, you have literally felt knocked over by parents who are pushing Yeah?

Andrea Lafleche 34:04
It makes it difficult to continue helping. Right? You're taking it's almost like I get that you probably don't trust me. You don't know me outside of this situation. You don't know what I do on a regular basis. You don't know the other students I'm working with. But you're now taking five to 30 plus minutes of my day to repeat the same thing that we've talked about that could be using, working on supporting your students, right, and getting them the place that they need to be going. And so one the first phone call, okay, like I get it. You're stressed. You don't know what's going on. You're not here, potentially, you're not close. I'm trying to help you out as well. Second, third, fourth, like, okay, like, I'm working on it. Also, please talk to your student, because I can't one. I can't tell you because of FERPA, most likely, unless it's certain things and the school says I can, or they sign off to like, I can't force your student to tell you, so I need you You talk a lot about really. Relationship Building Scott, when it comes to you and Arden and her diabetes in general, like I need you to go work on your relationship with your student and figure out why they don't want to tell you

Scott Benner 35:08
these. Oh, see, because of how we have everything set up, that's not front of my mind, but now that you're saying it, I understand that there's a little bit of whisper down the lane here going on. And not everybody's always whispering everything completely, because you can't say everything that you know, the kid's not telling the parent. The parent might be out in the snow anyway, because they don't have the full community. Oh, I see, yeah. So yeah. Back to the answer of, When should I start working on this? The day the kids born? Is the answer? Is that? Right? Okay,

Andrea Lafleche 35:34
pretty much. All right. Try your darnedest to create a relationship where they feel like they can tell you things. Yeah, okay, so other accommodations that you could request, using the restroom as needed, or dependent, most times again, this is very school dependent. There's not going to be assigned seating. It's college for the most part, right? Maybe in a lab you might, because you have lab partners, this is your station. You're doing long term things. So maybe it's like, can I get preferential seating near the door so if I need to use the restroom, I'm not disturbing everybody as I'm making my exit, right? Permission, again, this comes a lot with, like, food not being allowed in classrooms, depending on what it is, what program you're in, but that permission or ability to treat high or low blood sugars, keeping food on you, or figuring out what that looks like depending on the situation, again, most of the time, you're going to find potential issues or, like the no food in lab related settings, right? You're doing experiments. You don't want to contaminate them. So if that's something you foresee your student being in, whether that's in their general education requirements, or they're going into the sciences, is that going to be an issue? How do we work around this? How do we figure this out? We talked a little bit about what might not be accommodative, and one of those was priority registration for very limited reasons. But a reason to ask for this is, you know your body best, you know your diabetes best. You know kind of what schedules work for you. So this can be helpful in kind of having the best chance to make a schedule that works best for you, especially thinking about it's not most likely going to look like in high school, where you're in school class eight to three and then the rest of the day, right? Monday, Wednesday, Friday might look the same and Tuesday, Thursday might look the same, but maybe we can try and get them a little bit similar, right? So that's another thing to kind of think about as an option to

Scott Benner 37:24
avoid problematic times a day, like, if your blood sugar is always low at 2pm like, don't have you walking across campus at 2pm if you can help that stuff like that, right?

Andrea Lafleche 37:33
Or if it's really helpful that you eat around that you actually have a lunch, make sure you have time to get lunch, right? And that's not just eating, but like, do I have time from where my classes to get to? Wherever I can get food again, depending on campuses, some have multiple dining halls. Some have one. Can I get there? Can I get food? Is that going to be rush hour? Can I then leave and get to my next class on time? Okay, so yeah, and there's many other things and they you can ask, what are some potential other options? But those are probably the top things that we think make the most sense around diabetes. Specifically, I'm

Scott Benner 38:11
going to add an experience here, just because I think it belongs in this somewhere you're going to find that the food at school is not conducive to stable in range blood sugars there. I don't mean your kid going to like a convenience store and buying a bag of chips or something like that. I'm talking about sitting down at the dining hall eating. You don't realize, you know, oh, everyone loves the broccoli. It's because it's cooked in a ton of salt and oil. You know, to go that kind of thing like you don't recognize the quality of the food until you get to college, until your kid gets to college, you do not recognize that the quality of the food, I didn't certainly is as poor as it is. And you know, by the time Martin went off to college, she had she was using, I think she was looping. When she left for college, she had an A, 1c in the, I think, in the high fives at that point. And she'd go have a what she thought was a reasonable dinner, and she's like that, I can't seem to give myself enough insulin for broccoli and chicken. I don't understand what's happening, right? So, yeah, we learned that along the way, and we fought it every which way we could, meaning like, you know, just changing our settings and being more aggressive. And it worked for the most part, but her a 1c drifted up into the mid sixes at college, and this isn't because she wasn't bolusing or anything like that, right? And now you're using a lot more insulin, and now you're walking around more with more insulin on board. You're getting, you know, you more chances for lows. There's a lot of reasons why you don't want to do that, but my takeaway was, and the only fix I could come up with was getting her housing with an actual kitchen or refrigerator situation, not like a tiny little refrigerator, a place where she could keep fresh food and make herself meals. And as soon as we got her into that scenario, everything went back to the way it was. So it's more impactful than you think. It's not just the food. My blood sugar, it starts to touch everything. It starts to touch definitely, three o'clock in the morning, like, why is she getting low all of a sudden in the middle of the night? That never happens. Oh, it's because the food she ate at 9pm crushed her she put a bunch of insulin on it. Now she you don't know how simply just that food choice can just it spins a lot of things out of control. So if you can get to good quality fresh food at college, I think you'll make the entire experience much easier. That's just my opinion. But no,

Andrea Lafleche 40:29
I definitely think we all know that nutrition plays a huge role in a bunch of things, some ways to not only mitigate but to kind of see what you're working with, is go on the dining website. Most schools are contracting out their dining services. A handful, I would say, have in house dining, which can potentially be better. But see again, when you're going on these tours, when you're thinking about schools, check out what their dining options are. Some it's just one dining hall and they're open for breakfast. They have limited things in between. They're open fully for lunch, limited things in between. Dinner. That's it. Some larger schools are going to have multiple dining halls. Some are going to have like, their dining halls are going to be like, known for certain things. They're tailored to maybe certain types of diets, depending on how large the school is. Go on the website, see what information they provide most places. Now, I would say online, you can get the nutrition information of what they're providing. I mean nutrition information in general, as we know, can be little hit or miss, depending on what's going on. But feel free to contact dining and see what the options are. See what's going on, how it works, because some schools might not have fully kitchened housing options, right,

Scott Benner 41:45
right? I'm saying beyond that, even if it says it's a piece of chicken, it could have preserved like it might not be the same breasted chicken you get at home if there's preservatives in it, if it's been frozen prior that, you know, I know that sounds like. I don't know if it sounds hippy dippy or not. I don't I honestly, I don't care what it sounds like. I'm telling you, it's harder to Bolus for processed food than non processed food, and some of it's going to look like it's not processed food, and yet still be so be careful. That's all, yeah,

Andrea Lafleche 42:12
yeah. And you should, and what I'm saying is you should be able to go and pull up exactly the nutrition facts of what that chicken breast is. Yeah, many schools, especially if you're going to a larger institution will have that option for you, and you can at least have a base to go off of, yeah. Also, you

Scott Benner 42:26
don't want to get involved in that situation where you finally are like, you know, now you're on the phone, you're like, Hey, what are you doing? Like, you know, like, your blood sugar's all over the place. Like, what's going on? Because there's a lot of other factors beyond food. I mean, we're not really talking about this here, but sending your kid off to college to take care of their diabetes, while all the other things that college is is happening is difficult. So I'm just saying, let's not make it more difficult in one area where you know it doesn't need to be if you can be a little def about but this is

Andrea Lafleche 42:55
why get your accommodation set up, because this is what we're trying to deal with when you get when your student gets there, and things might not go well, and you don't want their academics to unnecessarily suffer almost double, right? Because they're already feeling crappy. They're already feeling they might have missed class, so they're already missing information. Let's not have them then get a zero on an exam, right? Because they didn't have accommodations in place because something happened, yeah, the night before, because you're re figuring out your diabetes in college in a lot of ways, and

Scott Benner 43:28
you don't want that relationship piece to fall apart, because it's going to, it's getting into, like, parenting, but like, it's going to at some point, because as they get older, they're going to, like, it's very healthy, by the way, but they're going to test boundaries and try to pull away from you and make decisions, like, I can do this on my own, and then maybe they can't, or maybe they're not gonna do as good of whatever. Like, there's a lot of stuff that can now. I'm saying, don't make it harder in places where you don't have to, and no one thinks about the quality of the food when they send their kid off to college. It's not until you get there that you go, Oh, these are the stories I've heard from other people who have kids at school. Like, this food sucks. Like, so anyway, or

Andrea Lafleche 44:03
you don't realize that it's not open when you thought it would be right, going back to your class schedule, like, oh, I can't get lunch until 1130 but I only have 11 to 1130 to get lunch. What am I going to eat? Right? So these are all things that you want to think about when you're searching for schools, I

Scott Benner 44:22
see mail access on your list. I'm interested why that's something you brought up, sure. So

Andrea Lafleche 44:26
again, every school is different, but at when I went to college, we each residence hall had their own mail room, and that's where I would go, check my mailbox, buy a slip my packet, I would go get my package from the front desk. That's how it worked. But the mail that was sent to me didn't go from wherever is going to the mail in town, then to my residence hall. It went to the central receiving they sorted it, then, like the next day, it would get on their truck. To my building, and then that day, or the next day, the student staff that worked our mail room would sort it out. They'd write the slips, they'd put them in mailbox. So let's say my parents were overnighting me something. It might have overnighted from their house to central receiving, but then it took two to three more days, potentially, to get to my residence hall, learning how mail works, especially, and I say this especially if you're planning to receive medical supplies there, right? I didn't necessarily receive medical supplies because I went to school 30 minutes for my parents, so I was home every few months. Anyway, I'd pick up what I needed and bring it back with me. Or if there was some sort of emergency, I could get it in 30 minutes, but not everybody's doing that. So what does mail look like, and how do we set that up or make sure that it works for our medications? Or is it not going to work? I worked at a school and lived on campus where mail wasn't received on the weekends, so if my insurance was like, Oh, we're sending your insulin. And it had to be like, Friday into Saturday. Nobody's there to receive it. It's gonna get sent back. It's gonna do whatever. How am I getting that right? Also,

Scott Benner 46:10
where is the school? What's the temperature at the school? Like, like, Are you down south? Is it warmer? You know? Yep, somebody sent you off this medication on ice. It's meant to arrive at your door be opened, not arrive at your door and sit for three or four days before somebody sees it when it's 95 degrees outside. So, so what do you do? You set up a situation where, when they see your overnight come, they bring it right to you. Can you work that out?

Andrea Lafleche 46:33
I think that's one something you probably talked to. Start with your accommodation services team, right about like, this is what I need. How does that like, figure out who to talk to, some options that I discussed again when I was in that job and living on campus was our health care center was open every day. So could it go because there was a medical supply? Could I have it actually shipped to their address and they receive it for me. They were a fully functioning like medical doctor's office, right? They had refrigeration, all those things. Could they receive it for me and I'd pick it up there instead of at the mail? That was an option. And so talking about what could work if it's a situation where you're going to have to send medical supplies, yeah, what can we figure out? I'm positive that they'll be able to figure something out. It's just, you want to think about those things and have those questions answered before. It's like, oh, I shipped this. It got returned

Scott Benner 47:34
before. Right, right? I did two things with this. So first of all, when Arden leaves with dry goods that are medical supplies, she takes enough to cover her plus while she's there, right? It sucks, but she's got a plastic bin under her bed that looks like a CVS pharmacy that has everything in it. It's jammed away under her bed. But insulin, I was worried about what you were talking about, because we do get our insulin through mail order, so I changed her insulin prescription while she was at school to picking up at a pharmacy that was local to her. Now that's still not great. Like, nothing you come up with is going to be perfect, because, like, you know, sitting here in the house, you're like, oh well, she'll just go pick it up until you're like, art in your insulin center. And she goes, Listen, I'm going to school. I don't have time for this. Like, you don't even like, and you're like, Well, you got to go. And then a lot of stuff add stress. It's interesting. And I did have one example once where a GLP was being sent to her through overnight mail. And I wasn't prepared, because it wasn't a thing we were thinking of. We were a couple of years into it, and I thought, What do I do? So I called the mail center, I spoke to a person, and I said, Look, there's this thing coming in. It's on ice. It's medication. I'm not trying to cause you a big problem here, but if there's a way to get that from you to her without all the stops in between, and the person took me seriously and was lovely and took care of it, but I don't see how I could have had that set up to happen, like, on a monthly thing. Like, I mean, you can't expect this is the thing. I have this thing written down to ask you at the end, but I'm just going to say it here, and then you can get to the last couple of things that you want to talk about. Just because you set something up doesn't mean someone's not going to mess up down the line. That's going to it could not happen. You know what? I mean, like, so you have to be aware that it's still a human interaction. I hear people all the time want to be like, I have that my 504 plan, and they didn't do it. I'm going to call an attorney. I'm like, I mean, okay, I get that. They're supposed to do it. But you can also step back sometimes and see how that thing could be missed. The guy in the mail center, that's not a thing he does, and then all of a sudden you're putting in this very specific ask. They don't have a process for it, and so it could get missed. And I think that can happen along the lines with a lot of this stuff. And so, you know, it's tough, because you could put, I mean, am I far off? You put these things in place, but they don't always work the way you want them to, right? Yeah, I think

Andrea Lafleche 49:47
when it comes to some of this stuff that we're talking about, when we're talking about accommodations, they need to happen the way that they're supposed to, because that's under the ADA and a very legal thing. Yes, of course. Human error and different things like that can occur. But when it comes to your accommodations, like, I'm supposed to be able to stop the clock, the river is like, No, I don't. I don't know that's different. Like, no, but yes, the male, right? I think that's where the relationships come in, right? You talk a lot about, like, the relationships, and building relationships and encouraging your student to build relationships. Like every student is different when it comes to who they are, how they handle their diabetes, who they want to know. Like, are they outgoing? Are they introverted? Like, we're all different individuals, and the expectation that we should all be like, I have diabetes, here's my Dexcom. Like everybody true, but like encouraging, like building relationships with the people on your campus, your peers, but also the staff. Like, like I said, we want to support you, and I think knowing a face and knowing a name, and you know, even with your male staff, like being kind every time you go and be like, thank you so much. Like, I really appreciate you putting this aside for me, they'll get to know your name and like, Oh, this is Andrea's package. Like, she'll be here, yeah, like, tomorrow to get it, or whatever, like, and those things go a long way. Like, it's not a nitty gritty process, but it helps, right? And I think that's

Scott Benner 51:15
I completely agree with you. I'll tell you that Arden said to me in her like, halfway through her freshman year. In the beginning, she said, Guess what happened to me today? I was like, what? She goes, my professor came up to me and pulled me aside and said, Hey, I'm not supposed to ask you this, but what's wrong with you? And Arden was like, Oh, I have type one diabetes. And the professor was like, Oh, good. And so then they started having this real conversation, like a personal conversation, and the professor said, like, I'm not allowed to know what your medical condition is, and I'm not allowed to ask you, but I'm sitting here and I'm watching you, and I'm thinking, I don't see anything going on. And it started to worry her, right, that there was some really big thing happening that could just happen out of nowhere. And the professor was just looking for some like, is there a thing I should be looking for comfort or something, because you don't look like you have an accommodate? Like, that whole thing was happening. And Arden, at the end said, like, I wish all of my professors would just come up to me like that. That would be awesome. To your point, not everybody might want that, but the fact of the matter is, is, if you're not a person who wants that, and that happens, I can see people getting really angry about that, but I would always say again, like, just try to see the other side of it. Like the professor was not supposed to ask her that. And the way she asked her Andre was not, like, slick, like she literally, I'm not making up this. She said, Hey, can I ask you a question? What's wrong with you? So, like, not optimal, not great, yeah, but response then dictated how the rest of it went. Then she had a great relationship with the person after that, you know. And I

Andrea Lafleche 52:48
can't believe I didn't write this in my notes, but this, I'm so glad you brought this up. When a student is given accommodations, the professor is only notified of the accommodation, and that's either through the disability office, sending them the information of like this is what the student gets, or the student bringing a letter they're not given the why they're only given. The student gets stop time on their exams. They can have food, what they get, the list they don't get. Andrea has diabetes, so she might go low and she needs to treat her blood sugar they get Andrea can have food, she can have her phone. She can leave to use the restroom whenever she wants. So I'm sure that some faculty, especially seeing because a lot of us are like, I don't have a disability. Legally, we do. But is diabetes disability? That's a philosophical conversation, if you want for another time, we don't look sick or in need most of the time, unless we're, like, super low or something's going on. So I can imagine faculty being like, Ah, this person is totally normal. There are they're always focused. They're always paying attention. They get great grades. Not that people with disabilities don't get great grades, but like, there's no indication in their mind that they would need any of this. Exactly what

Scott Benner 54:00
was happening? Like, I think the teacher wanted to say, like, You're freaking me out, like, I have this list of things, like, you're allowed to just stand up and leave the room if you want to.

Andrea Lafleche 54:07
Why, right? Like, are you gonna pass out on me? Like, do I call someone? Like, what's gonna happen? Like, yeah, so they might be on edge. So, yeah, telling your faculty ahead of time. If you're comfortable with that, go for it. Please. Do.

Scott Benner 54:20
I think that the professor was confused too, because I think the professor was worried that it was a mental health thing and that they weren't like. So there's a lot like, again, I want to point out, if they thought it was a mental health thing, Hey, what's wrong with you? Probably, again, not the way to go, but that is just a very there's a thing you might not know. So that's why I wanted to bring it up. But go ahead, move on to transportation. I'm sorry, sure. I

Andrea Lafleche 54:39
think your example of this previously, when we're talking about accommodations, is great. Accommodations, is great. Like, Arden had to take a bus to get to a different classes, right? So, like, what does transportation look like around campus? Right? I went to a large state school. My residence hall was on the outskirts. My first class was all the way on the other side of campus, so I had a good 1520 minute walk. Walk, if that's what I decided to do in the morning, or there was a bus, right? So, like I had that option. What does that look like at your school? What does transportation look like on campus for you? Like, if your blood sugar is low, am I gonna be able to hop a bus to get back to my residence hall? Even if I brought my blood sugar up, maybe I don't want to walk and then risk going low again. Or would I have to walk? Do I have to wait and then walk to campus. I think the other thing, like you said, getting supplies at a CVS, maybe that's a great option. But do you have a car on campus? Are you allowed to have a car on campus? If you're not? Do they provide transportation to places off campus? Some schools do. Some schools don't. What do those things look like? So asking those questions so you can make decisions on some of these other things, like the mail or dining options. So Arden's

Scott Benner 55:45
been at two schools, and one of them, like I said, was spread out over a city, and we did get a car down to her eventually, and got her a parking permit. And that all made most things incredibly better there when she transferred to another institution. It's just not a school where people have cars. So we were like, hey, you know, can she have her car? Here's things that we were thinking like the first place. And the person I talked to was like, man, nobody has a car here. There's not even nowhere to park. Like, there's just, there's no need to have a car here at all. And I said, Well, I would like her to be able to access a car if she needs to go for medical help on her own, or even if we want her to come home or something, because she's closer now, that kind of thing. And it's funny, the best they could do is they gave her a parking spot, but it's so far from her the car's not accessible, like, it's basically like we're housing her car somewhere near where she sleeps, and then she basically has to take a 20 minute walk to get to the car, to get into it, and even the couple of times she's going out for supplies, she's like Dad, I had to go out for supplies, go back to my dorm, drop off the stuff, go park the car, and then it was late at night, so I had to Uber from the park, from my car to back to my dorm. So it's really not very valuable in situations like you'll see. But again, figure out where you're going, find out the lay of the land. Know those things first, save yourself a lot of hassle. Exactly,

Andrea Lafleche 57:08
yeah, which is kind of like, what are the other amenities like on campus or near campus? Do they have convenience stores? What does the health center look like? Don't assume that like, Oh, we're looking at a large public school. They're going to have, like, a robust health center. That's not always the case, right? I've worked at places where it's anything from, like, I'm basically going to, like, an urgent care semi, like, Nurse office situation. You have this here, you need to go do this to, like, it's basically its own hospital. I could get PT there, I can see the eye doctor. Like, they have all these specialties because they're so big, or they're attached to a hospital. See what that looks like. That often

Scott Benner 57:44
becomes the case too, like, because first time Arden got sick once I said, I need you to go to urgent care, she went, and she said, I'm here with seven people I'm sure are oding right now, and me, and I'm like, Oh, great, because there's just nowhere to go. And even when she ended up in a hospital once. This is something to consider. It was not the greatest institution of medicine that I had ever seen in my entire life. So it isn't not worth wondering if I have a choice between a few colleges, like, what is the medical care around the college like? In case something comes up, then the new place she went has exactly what you're talking about. Like they have medical care on site. It's insane how good it is. And they even have their own pharmacy. It's not even a for profit pharmacy. You just send your scripts there, and then whatever the pill costs. Like, you know what I mean? I'm like, wow, that's yeah, thought out. But that school is near a major health system, and I think that's part of how it's working. So anyway, definitely a bunch of stuff. I wouldn't have thought

Andrea Lafleche 58:41
of a lot of these. And I think the variety of types of higher higher education institutions that we have in this country is great because not every student is going to thrive in the same environment. I think about me and even my siblings. Both of my siblings went to, like, smaller, more intimate campuses, and that was great for them. And I went to a large public school because I was like, I don't want to feel like I'm in high school. I want options. I want to like, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Some people are like, I know exactly what I want to do. This is the life path I'm on. But you're going to find that the things that we're talking about now are most likely, in most situations, going to be easier at larger institutions. They're going to have more options. They're going to have more ways to navigate things, because they typically have more resources. They're serving more students, so they have to think about the diversity of students that they're getting and then the needs that they could have, right? They're

Scott Benner 59:37
almost forced to offer good services because of the large population, right?

Andrea Lafleche 59:42
It's kind of, they become like their own little town or city, yeah, especially because they're also usually, typically farther away from other resources. So they're like, we just need to have them on

Scott Benner 59:52
campus, right? Because what are we gonna do? We don't, if we don't provide this, there's nothing around here, so, correct, right?

Andrea Lafleche 59:57
Not that mid and small size of. Institutions aren't amazing and don't have great amenities and things to work with, but you're going to find, I would say, from my personal experience, that these things are going to be easier to navigate or have more options to determine what's best for you at some of those larger schools or schools that are closer to a metropolitan area,

Scott Benner 1:00:19
yeah. Well, it's been my finding Okay, so that's it. We got the by the way, this is hilarious. We were like, we'll probably get this done in like two hours. So that was one hour for the first time. So we're gonna probably need to put you back on the schedule a couple more times because I'm chatty and you have a lot of information in you, which is awesome, yeah, but did you like the way this went? We're still recording, but did you like the way this went? Yes, good,

Andrea Lafleche 1:00:39
yeah. I was a little worried when you were like, it's gonna be less conversation. I

Scott Benner 1:00:43
was like, Oh, I just met. Oh no, by the way, you don't understand this was less conversational. I stopped myself from talking like six times. Maybe that's what I should have said. I will stop talking as much as I normally do. Is probably what I should have said before we started. But I thought this was terrific. So thank you. Okay, good. Yeah, you

a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, G VO, glucagon. Find out more about G vo hypo pen at G VO, glucagon.com, forward slash, Juicebox. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juice box. This episode of the juice box podcast was sponsored by us Med, US med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today with us. Med links in the show notes. Links at Juicebox podcast.com our Juicebox community knows the importance of caregiver support so intimately, and Stacy's story was a great example of what caregivers go through on a daily basis, from helping managing the highs and the lows to juggling a full time job and putting dinner on the table. Life can be challenging at times. To learn more about the Medtronic champion community and to find helpful resources and tips for caregivers and families, visit Medtronic diabetes.com/parents caregivers, 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. Or you can go to Juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed, you're following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Hey, what's up, everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better, and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way, recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrong way. Recording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.