#1437 Hey Jessie

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Jessica, juggling four kids and Hashimoto’s, explores Charlie’s T1D journey through device changes, school nurse hurdles, and gradual care handoff.

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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
Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Welcome.

Jesse 0:14
My name is Jesse. I am a mother of a type one diabetic. She was four years old. It was the day after Halloween, and she is nine, and she's doing great. Please

Scott Benner 0:26
don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin. I know this is going to sound crazy, but blue circle health is a non profit that's offering a totally free virtual type one diabetes clinical care, education and support program for adults 18 and up. You heard me right, free. No strings attached, just free. Currently, if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama or Missouri, you're eligible for blue circle health right now, but they are adding states quickly in 2025 so make sure to follow them at Blue circle health on social media and make yourself familiar with blue circle health.org. Blue circle health is free. It is without cost. There are no strings attached. I am not hiding anything from you. Blue circle, health.org, you know why they had to buy an ad. No one believes it's free. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 the one year where CGM, that's one insertion a year. That's it. And here's a little bonus for you. How about there's no limit on how many friends and family you can share your data with with the ever since now, app no limits. Ever since, friends touched by type one's walk is coming up quickly on March 8 at the Saturday at Lake Eola Park in Orlando, Florida. Go now to touched by type one to sign up and register. It's completely free. You're gonna have a wonderful time. Touched by type one.org Go to the Programs tab, click on Steps to a cure. Hello.

Jesse 2:10
My name is Jesse, and I am a mother of a type one diabetic

Scott Benner 2:15
Well, I have children who grew up with Nickelodeon and things like that. So I'm gonna say, hey Jesse, and then we're gonna move on. You know that TV show? I

Jesse 2:24
think you emailed me that one time, the first time I reached out to you, when my daughter was first diagnosed, you were like, I'm gonna respond to you, even though I get so many emails, I'm gonna respond to you because of your name. And it just hit me a certain way today. It made

Scott Benner 2:39
me think of that silly TV show on the Disney Channel? Yeah, I wonder what happened to that girl. Let's not go down that rabbit hole just now. Okay, tell me a little bit about your family.

Jesse 2:47
I have four children. My type one diabetic is number two, a four. I've got book end boy, so I got boy, girl, girl, boy. We have a ginormous 135 pound German Shepherd dog who hopefully will not bark while I'm doing this podcast. I'm

Scott Benner 3:05
sure he'll be fine. How old was your daughter when she was diagnosed? She was

Jesse 3:10
four years old. It was the day after Halloween. Oh, and how old is she now? She is nine, and she's doing great.

Scott Benner 3:19
Five years ago on All Saints Day, her

Jesse 3:22
divers three falls on the same day that my dad died. Oh, you

Scott Benner 3:28
know, yeah, I only knew it was All Saints Day because it's my father's birthday, and he was not a saint, so it stuck in my head. Oh, that's crazy. Your father died on the day my father was born.

Jesse 3:39
Yes, he did two years after Charlie was diagnosed. Oh, not long ago. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. Feels like quite a while now.

Scott Benner 3:49
You know, I'm gonna take a weird turn and ask your question. It's only a couple years ago, but it feels like a long time ago.

Jesse 3:56
Yeah, it does. At first it felt like time was moving really slow when he died, but a lot of life happens in a short amount of time, and that's something that I'm realizing as I get older, that each year just seems to fly by, which makes the makes time. I don't know. I don't know time has been very confusing for me, because I feel like Charlie's been diagnosed. Well, it has been. It's been most of her life. You know, she doesn't even remember not being diabetic at this point. Yeah, but that's how it feels. I feel like my my dad has been gone for so long. Yeah.

Scott Benner 4:31
Do you think that's a little because your life is so busy, like, do you think if your life wasn't so fast, you'd have maybe more time to think about that?

Jesse 4:38
Yes, definitely, for sure. And I'm also a stuffer, so I just try to stuff all those feelings down and not deal with them. And life is incredibly busy with four kids. First you

Scott Benner 4:51
said, stuff her. And I thought, is that like a furry? What is she saying? Does she go to a convention? Dress to something? No, no, you don't let your feelings out. Correct? What are we? Irish, English, Catholic. What are we? I'm

Jesse 5:03
a Christian, but I just, I have a hard time dealing. I don't want to deal with the emotions of my dad's death, so I just step them down instead. You know, my husband also lost his dad a year before my dad died, he has watched, you know his memorial video countless times. You know, we can't even count. We watch it all, especially every year. We watch it on his death anniversary. I made my dad's video Memorial video, and I still have only watched it the one time.

Scott Benner 5:36
Two different theories about how to handle this. You'd think your husband's trying to keep his father's memory alive. Or, do you think he's actually, that's what he's doing? Yes, it's interesting that you don't want to talk about this, and it's the first thing I wanted to talk about. I'm sorry.

Jesse 5:51
I apologize. It's all

Scott Benner 5:53
good. You want me to pivot, or you're okay, let's, let's pivot away from my dad. Okay, yeah. I'm not gonna oddly,

Jesse 6:00
oddly, he earlier, at one point in his life, he was a type two diabetic. So that's interesting. That's a little notation, and at that point, I didn't understand truly what that that even meant. At

Scott Benner 6:13
one point in his life, did he decide to quit? Or what do you mean at one point? No, he was able to reverse type two diabetes. Did he diet and exercise his way out of the diagnosis he did. Yeah, wow, good for him. So did he ever use insulin?

Jesse 6:26
No, he never used insulin. Okay, all right.

Scott Benner 6:29
Well, I, I'm gonna tell you this last bit so that everyone can figure out that I wasn't just being morbid. But today's August 15, which I don't usually times them these, but my father in law passed away on August 3, which was my wife and I's wedding anniversary, and the day that we left on the first family vacation we took in six years, we were on an airplane when my father in law passed away, and it was terrible, and we couldn't turn back, or, you know, right, cancel a trip. We had other people with us, you know, etc. And you know, my wife's family was lovely about, you know, preparing everything. And, you know, without us there, and, you know, to help. And then we got home and had 24 hours to get ready to go to his funeral, which got scheduled by the church on my mother's birthday, who just passed away recently, and then you get on and you're like, said that. I was like, oh, maybe we're supposed to talk about this. But, yeah, we're not. We're moving on. But I don't want to talk about it. Except Jesse ain't up for this crap because of reasons that she doesn't want to talk about on a podcast, although I am going to ask you one question, and then I'm gonna leave you alone on it. Do you go to therapy? I

Jesse 7:42
do not go to therapy. But it probably would be good to unpack that. But I'm a little bit afraid of I don't really want to unpack it all. There's a lot.

Scott Benner 7:53
Jesse's like, if it ain't broke, too bad don't fix it. Yep, just leave it alone.

Jesse 7:59
Feel like I'm coping. Okay,

Scott Benner 8:01
I haven't shot anybody, Scott, I've never car jacked anyone. I don't know what you want from me. I'm doing great. Yeah, we're doing fine. You don't randomly yell at people for no reason or anything like that. Just my kids. Oh, well, they deserve it for being born now, ruining your life. So tell me a little bit about your daughter's diagnosis. How did it come on? How did you realize what was going on when you think of a CGM and all the good that it brings in your life, it's the first thing you think about. I love that I have to change it all the time. I love the warm up period every time I have to change it. I love that when I bump into a door frame, sometimes it gets ripped off. I love that the adhesive kind of gets mushy sometimes when I sweat and falls off. No, these are not the things that you love about a CGM. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Eversense 365 the only CGM that you only have to put on once a year, and the only CGM that won't give you any of those problems. The Eversense 365 is the only one year CGM designed to minimize the vice frustration. It has exceptional accuracy for one year with almost no false alarms from compression lows while you're sleeping. You can manage your diabetes instead of your CGM with the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, one year one CGM so

Jesse 9:24
my I have, I'm one of five, and my brother, who's closest in age to me, he is a type one diabetic, and he was diagnosed at nine years old. And so I had known the signs and symptoms of type one diabetes. I was not unaware of them. I just remember that Charlie had just started preschool, and it was right around Halloween, and she was also in this running club, and she started drinking so much water. She was normally not a big water drinker, but she was chugging water. I'm talking refilling. Her water bottle, you know, 667, times a day, and she was going to the bathroom a lot. Charlie also was like, complaining that her legs were always hurting, and she was getting tired when she didn't need to be tired. You know, she barely did anything. And she, you know, at four years old, you have a ton of energy. Yeah, yeah. She started showing those signs. I remember it was a Sunday because I took her to this running club, and she drank so much water at this running club, and she was complaining and she did not want to run, which normally, which was abnormal for her. And took her to school the next day, and I noticed that she had, her teacher had told me that she had drank a lot of water, and then when she got home, she had refilled her water bottle a ton of times, and then she took a nap, which was also abnormal for her, yeah, and she ended up wetting the bed. And Charlie had, you know, she had potty trained herself before she was two years old. I didn't have to do anything. She just one day, took off her diaper, put it in the trash and said, I pee, pee in the potty. Now, boom, that was it.

Scott Benner 11:06
And you were like, I'm the best parent ever.

Jesse 11:09
No, I was like, wow, she is brilliant.

Scott Benner 11:13
Finally, we get a smart one, that other one, we're gonna ignore him. Now, she really just made a proclamation, yeah,

Jesse 11:19
she took her diaper off, she threw it right in the trash can, and said, I pee, pee in the potty. Now, Mama, and that was it. I didn't have to do anything. It was the easiest potty training ever, because she did it herself, and she never wet the bed ever. She just went straight into panties. Never wet the bed. So when she wet the bed during a nap in the afternoon, it was confusing. You know, it was, it was not right that. So, like I said, this started on, like a Sunday, and Halloween was on Thursday, and I remember, on Thursday we maybe went, went to the bathroom, and then I put her in her unicorn, riding a unicorn. She was a ballerina that wrote a unicorn. So I put her in this this costume, and I inflated it right after she went to the bathroom, and we went three houses up the street, and she said, I gotta go pee pee. And so I knocked on the neighbor's door. She said, Trick or treat. And then I said, Can we use your bathroom? And she went to the bathroom, and then she was complaining, I'm so thirsty. So they gave her a water bottle, and she chugged a water bottle, and we went just a few more houses. Didn't even make it to the end of our block before she said, I'm done. I'm tired. I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah. So I walked her back down. She sat in the middle of our cul de sac with her dad, who was passing out candy at like, a you know, we had a fire pit, yeah? And she sat there. She drank hot chocolate and quite a few pieces of candy, and did not look well at that point. I remember it hit me right then and there, and I shot a text message to my brother, and I said, Hey, this is what I've been noticing since Sunday. You know, all the water drinking, the wedding, the excessive bathroom, and this is what just happened right now. Tell me that my daughter that I'm crazy and my daughter's not type one diabetic. And he said, I'm gonna tell you I think your daughter's type one diabetic. And I was, oh my gosh. It was so hard,

Scott Benner 13:15
not enough Kit Kats in the world to fix that. I was like, no,

Jesse 13:18
no, no, she's not. So I tell my husband about it, and I told him, Okay, listen, I'm going to we didn't have a meter at our house or anything like that, so I wouldn't have tested or been able to test her blood sugar. I said, okay, in the morning, I'm going to take her to the doctor. And he said, Okay, you do what you think is best. And then in the morning, we were sitting together, and she seemed okay, so I said, Okay, I'm not gonna take her to the doctor. And my husband said, okay, you know what's best. You do what you think. And then 15 minutes later, I picked up the phone and I called our pediatrician, and I said, Hey, I'm gonna bring my daughter in. I think she's type one diabetic.

Scott Benner 13:55
Also, a lot of people are telling me I know best. But Can I be honest with you, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I think my husband doesn't mean that. I think he's just trying to stay

Jesse 14:06
out of it. Yeah, mine was just like, hey, look, you're the mom. You make the decision. And sure enough, you know, 15 minutes later, my decision was, I'm going to take her to the doctor. I just can't sit on this. So took her in, tested her blood sugar, and I remember the meter said, hi. She walked back in and she said, Oh, that's weird. It says hi. It must be broken, yeah, that's what the nurse said. I

Scott Benner 14:32
thought it was saying hello to me. I thought it was saying hello to me, Jesse. I remember as clear as the bell saying to my wife, oh, my God, this is so nice. It says hello to you before it gives you the number. It's not adorable.

Jesse 14:45
Yeah, I'm like the doctor. Heard her say that, though the pediatrician was walking by our room, and he heard her say that, and he walked in, shut the door behind him, and he said, That's not what that means. Yeah, also,

Scott Benner 14:58
we're letting her. No, but that's not for this conversation, right?

Jesse 15:02
So they they were super kind, and they just said, Hey, your daughter's type one diabetic, we're gonna need you to drive straight over to the Children's Hospital, and we're gonna call ahead and let them know you're coming. And I did not say a word, Scott, I didn't say a word. I broke down in tears. I scooped my daughter up. I didn't even get a checkout sheet. I scooped her up and ran out of that doctor's office, put her in the car. First person I called as I'm driving home was my brother, and I'm crying my eyes out, and I told him what they just told me, and he's like, Hey, you gotta pull over. You're gonna get in a car accident. You are hysterical, and I'm panicking, thinking, No, she's gonna die. Like, if I don't get her to the hospital, she's gonna die. And he's like, she's not gonna die, but I need you to, you know, he's like, did you call your Did you call your husband? I'm like, No, I called you.

Scott Benner 16:04
He told me I know best.

Jesse 16:08
So I ended up. He's like, Okay, I want you to pull over. I want you to call him. I want you to tell him what's going on so he can, you know, take work the rest of the day off and drive you there, because you're nuts and

Scott Benner 16:22
so that get some real feedback from your brother. He's like, you know, the stuffing thing, that's not your only thing, so stop for a second.

Jesse 16:28
Yeah? He's like, Listen, lady, you're gonna have a bigger problem if you don't pull your car over. So yeah, that is the story of Charlie's diagnosis. She was, you know, I noticed symptoms on Sunday and Friday she was diagnosed. So it was really, really quick. She, she must have been maybe, you know, looking back and looking at her a 1c when she was diagnosed, she, she maybe had type one for a couple of weeks. Okay, yeah,

Scott Benner 16:53
hindsight, you can figure it out a little easier. Obviously, start seeing more signs that you didn't see at first. Yeah,

Jesse 16:59
yeah. She had like, a cold prior to that as well. It's pretty

Scott Benner 17:03
well done on your part. I don't, I don't like, it's not nearly the worst one I've ever heard.

Jesse 17:07
Yeah. I mean, when we, when I did get her to the hospital, and they did, you know, they have meters that don't say hello to you. So her blood sugar was 568,

Scott Benner 17:15
okay, how long did they keep you or did they not? Two

Jesse 17:20
days, two days, two days, and we had to attend some classes. Could go home, and they gave us a bag of stuff and, like, two insulin pens, and said, best of luck to you the night I was the first night that I was in the hospital with her, because we had, you know, we had another kid at that time. So my husband went home, and I stayed with her. So I remember just I, I came across your Facebook page. Okay, I just started typing in Facebook in the search. I just started typing in things. And then I was in a, you know, different diabetes things, Georgia, diabetes groups, things like that, one person had mentioned on their Juicebox Podcast, and so boom, I found it right away. My brother was super sweet. He overnighted a Dexcom, okay, transmitter and a and a g6 to us so that when we were released, we had one, because I had asked the endocrinologist for one, and he said, now he wouldn't give me one. How come did he say? Why he did not? He just said they want us to get familiar with accurate readings. And I thought, This guy is absolutely nuts. And that was the beginning. Start of me, I don't trust these doctors to make decisions anymore. As soon as he told me, No, my brother overnighted us one. And then I just went, I realized, hey, I can log on to their website and request a Dexcom and that's what I did. And then they contacted me. Dexcom contacted me. I gave them my insurance information, and then I was able to they needed a prescription, obviously, and I switched who I wanted the endocrinologist to be.

Scott Benner 19:04
That was that nice and easy, and that was it. Can I have a Dexcom? Please? No. I'm gonna start advocating for people to say, douche bag. Says, What after that? Yeah, yeah, I

Jesse 19:13
know. And that's when I realized that this is what this is. This is the ball game that they want to play. They they just, I don't know why they would say no, but I realized I've got to take this into my own hands. Why would they not want us to be able to have a Dexcom that gives us so much information and just peace of mind? As a parent with a with a child, you know?

Scott Benner 19:33
I mean, I guess you can go round and round on this point, and I have and I could do it again, but I get both sides of the argument, like, hey, just, you know, do it with the meter at first, so you can figure it out, you know? But I don't know what it is you figure out, because I look back on my own life, and I couldn't figure out anything with just a meter. It wasn't until I got a CGM that I was like, Oh, I see patterns and cause and effect and oh my gosh. Like, I. Make changes. Like, you know, like, that kind of thing. So, like, is it just an old thing? People say, Yeah, you know what I mean. Like, like, is it leftover from When insulin pumps came? And people, I

Jesse 20:12
really, really do feel like it depends on what dark so, like, for example, that endocrinologist that told me No. Was an older endocrinologist. He he's not, you know, up with the technology and probably didn't trust it, right? That's why He said No, and that's what I found, even when I switched endocrinology offices altogether, the first endocrinologist that I saw at this new office, I asked him for a pump right away, and he said, No. He said, I want her to be diagnosed for at least a year. I want you to get familiar with giving injections for a year. And I thought, Why? Why would you put her through that for a year? If there's

Scott Benner 20:54
two ideas I have, if one is, I'm an old guy and I don't know how to use this newfangled thing, and if you're using it, you're going to ask me about it, then what am I going to say? Yeah, you know, I'll get exposed or really, maybe they really do feel like, well, what are you going to do if a pump, you know, if you can't, if your pump breaks, or whatever? And I mean, my answer to that, and I understand that, I don't disagree that you should understand how to manually take care of your diabetes. I'm not minimizing that at all, but a year, where'd you come up with a year? What if I get it figured out in six weeks?

Jesse 21:25
I switched. I was like, All right, I'm done with this guy. So, um, switched to a different endo in that office, and she was much younger, and she and I said, we want to get on an insulin pump. And this was, you know, we had been, she had been Charlie, had been diagnosed. I mean, maybe three, three months at that point, and her a 1c was already 6.0 so she was like, I feel like you've got the hang of this, and I feel like we could get you on an insulin

Scott Benner 21:53
pump, right? I mean, that's, I think that's the bigger point. Is like, stop lumping me in with everyone else. Like, maybe I will figure it out quicker. You know, just because maybe your average is a year or and by the way, it's not even some people will never figure it out. They just eventually go, Oh, you're not figuring it out. I'll give you a pump and see if this helps,

Jesse 22:10
right? And I, and I remember just being like, I'm giving this little girl 14 plus injections a day because I wanted her in such a tight range, right? Yeah. So I was like, I'm I'm trying to dial this in here, and I'm having to give her all these injections. Why not just give her a pump where I can do these small increments to get her where she needs to be?

Scott Benner 22:33
No, I mean, I agree. I would want if, knowing what I know now, I would leave with a with a pump and a CGM, yes right away. Yeah, even knowing that if I put myself in that position, I wouldn't completely understand what I was doing, I would still rather start there. That's my opinion. So, yeah, you know, it's funny why you're talking about this. I have this note that somebody sent me recently, rattling around in my head. It was very well intended and kind. And the person said, you know, there was somebody on a recent episode, they really gave it hard to their doctor's office. And I think this person works in medicine, and people are trying, and I'm like, well, you're trying, and that's why it strikes you that way. You don't know that the people they're dealing with are trying. But at the same time, I It's so funny. If you ask me, Do you think your podcast beats up on the medical community, I'd say absolutely not. Like, I just think where people are telling their stories, and if that's what their story is, then you know what I mean? Like, that's not beating up on something, it's reporting what happened to them. So, right, right? It's not my fault that so many people have that story. You know,

Jesse 23:32
correct? Yeah. And I feel like that's the norm. A lot of people have the same story, and it's unfortunate. I do agree

Scott Benner 23:41
that people don't jump on podcasts to say positive stuff all the time. Like, you know, I mean, like, you don't jump up on Facebook to say, Oh, well, everything's going

Jesse 23:48
yeah, I will say, I love our endocrinologist. Now she's, she's phenomenal, yeah. And my biggest thing with her is she, she trusts me to manage, and takes everything I say to heart. And so we work more as a team. Yeah? Instead of feeling like we're working against each

Scott Benner 24:05
other, gotta be like that. It's really the only way it works well, so and type one

Jesse 24:10
is so personal, you know? Yeah, so the way that I manage my daughter's type one diabetes is not going to be the same as another child. It looks differently. I

Scott Benner 24:21
remember when I put the Pro Tip series out originally, and I got this note from somebody that says, like, you know, everybody doesn't do what you do. And I was like, Oh, I didn't think everybody did. Yeah, that's not why I put it up. Yeah. I thought, Oh, gosh. Like, do you think I'm saying to you, this is the exact way to do this? I was like, This is what I'm doing. Here's my outcomes. Take some of it, all of it, or none of it. I don't care. See what works for you. Yeah, yeah. I hope some of it helps you. And if it does great, and if it doesn't like I mean, I'm not coming to your house like, you know what I mean,

Jesse 24:54
right? I mean, we should all be learning from each other. I mean, I just spoke with one of my friends this morning, whose son is. Is type one, and you know, she Oh, wait, no, that was yesterday when I tried to hop on your podcast yesterday. Oh, we're definitely

Scott Benner 25:06
going to talk about that. Jesse, at some point,

Jesse 25:10
I was late to it, because I was actually trying to help my my girlfriend out. Her son had ketones, and I was just trying to walk her through some steps, you know? Yeah, so I was dealing with diabetes, and then I thought that I missed my appointment. You

Scott Benner 25:25
want to do this now? I had a 9am recording yesterday, and then I had an 11am recording so in between, I ate two eggs in a wrap, and I was getting up to my computer. Like, I was excited. I was, like, a couple of minutes early for my 11am like, Look at me. Go and I open up my email to look at that before I jump on and there is a person, like, frantically emailing me. It felt like like I've been on this call for 25 minutes. I don't know what's wrong or where you are, and I'm looking at the name, and it's not the name of the person who I'm recording with at 11 o'clock. I don't understand what's happening. And you know, I opened up the application to talk to the person 11, because I got to be honest with you, I was just going to respond back to your email and say, I don't know what you're talking about, but, and I jump on and then there's two people coming into the Zoom, and I'm like, the hell's happening, and I let you both in. And because a handful of times in my life, I'll set up a recording with someone, and by the way, no one do this to me because I really don't like it. You'll say, like, oh, I want to come on and talk about this. And then you'll surprise me with a third person. And you're like, I brought my mom on. I thought she'd be interesting. And I'm like, that doesn't sound as good. I know I got to split up the conversation between two people. Like, I would have preferred to know about this before I was going to do it, but people will spring it on me sometimes. But the person I recorded with yesterday at 11, Sam, like, I know her. Like, I know her, know her, like she works for touch by type one, or volunteers for touch by type one, and I've known her for like, a decade. I'm like, she would not do that to me, but I thought, well, maybe she did so like, I'm like, okay, hey, Jessica, what's up and and I'm like, trying to figure out. I'm like, Sam, do you know Jessica? And she goes, No, I have no idea who this is. And I was like, oh. I'm like, wait a minute, Jessica, who the hell are you? And then we looked and realized you were 24 hours early for your recording. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jesse 27:19
And I thought I would, and I thought I was late, so I actually did well. I crowded myself.

Scott Benner 27:24
And then this morning, by the way, you were like, two minutes late, and I thought, Oh, she's getting back at me.

Jesse 27:31
I told you, life is so crazy. There's too many people schedules to manage. And then at the same time, I'm trying to manage, you know, diabetes, just like, Yeah, I'm trying to manage diabetes. I'm helping other people with their diabetes, and

Scott Benner 27:43
trying to get that German Shepherd not to kill you. I think sounds like it's huge. Oh, he's

Jesse 27:47
the he is a sweet boy, but yeah, if you were coming to my door, you'd think, I'm glad there's a door between

Scott Benner 27:53
that. So in your notes to me about coming on, I love you. Have two topics in here. I love both of them. I want to go through both of them, yeah, trying to strike a balance between keeping your daughter's care good, giving her some autonomy, but not overwhelming her. I think this is after you learn about how insulin works and how all these gadgets work, and what the hell the smokey effect is. And once you've got all that down, I feel like this ends up being the long time goal. I almost said burden, but I don't mean burden, like burn, but like, responsibility of a person raising a small child with type one, like, I want her to be healthy now. I want them to understand this. I don't want to overwhelm them. Can you talk about that with me,

Jesse 28:41
yeah. So actually, that's been my goal with her from the beginning of her diagnosis. It was, you know, I want to, I want her to understand everything, right? But as a child, there's only so much you can take on, and I don't want her to to bear the weight of type one diabetes herself. I want her to understand, like I'm always going to be there. But ultimately, I am raising, I'm raising a person who's going to be an adult with type one diabetes, right? So when she becomes a certain age, she's going to have to fly the nest, right? And so she's going to have to understand, okay, what do I do here? My mom is not doing it for me. I don't. I don't ever want her to, so I'm trying to give her bits and pieces as we go. And my biggest thing is what is too much for her, because everyone always tells me, your daughter is so responsible. She manages her type one diabetes so well. And I'm like, okay, that's me, but

Scott Benner 29:49
she's nine. But okay,

Jesse 29:52
she's nine, but I am so I've been giving her bits and pieces last. Her was her very first year at school managing her diabetes without the nurse. I was done with the nurse. Love them. And I'm not coming on to hate on our nurse, but there's only so much that they can do, because there's protocols in place to protect their jobs. That's

Scott Benner 30:18
how I'm gonna stop you that love them sounded very southern and reminiscent of, Oh, bless your

Jesse 30:24
heart. I am in the South.

Scott Benner 30:27
Just I heard a lot in those two words, but go ahead, I

Jesse 30:29
do. I did love my nurse, but we got in fights probably three times, three maybe three to four times a week, three

Scott Benner 30:38
times a week. I thought you're gonna say three times. I have something stuck in my head because it came up online the other day, and it's your it's your secondary thing. But you kind of like you. You're blending the two ideas together. So I don't feel weird blending them together. I am fascinated when a nurse reaches out to a healthcare team without your Okay, and starts talking to the doctor about your kids medical stuff.

Jesse 31:04
Oh, I've heard of that happening. Yeah,

Scott Benner 31:07
yeah. I happened to me once. I happened to my daughter once. I did not react well to it. Like, for all my like, become, don't do stuff, you know. Like, I called the nurse's office and I was like, did you call my daughter's endocrinologist? And she goes, Yeah. And she started talking. I went, do not ever fucking do that again. And she goes, what? And I was like, What the fuck do you think you're doing? I was like, You're calling my kids doctor. Who are you? You're not me, you're not my wife, you're not my kid, you're a stranger. You're a lady who has a job at the high school. You don't have anything to do with my daughter. I I said, Jesse, I want to be clear. I think I said at her about four times in a 32nd call. And when I was done talking and she started talking, I said, I don't give a shit what you're gonna say. I'm done now. Don't do that again. And I hung up the phone, like, so it put me I was like, What in God's name, do you think you're doing? Like, really, I handle it very poorly. I want to be clear about that. First, there

Jesse 32:03
was somebody on one of your podcasts recently who shared, I feel like that you interviewed that had a similar situation. Yeah, it happens a lot. You know, I specifically put in our medical management plan certain things so that that couldn't happen because I was tired of the nurse telling me, oh, you can't make these changes in her pump, like changing her car ratio, right, or changing her basal rate for a certain time of day, like when she was at school, the nurse would tell me, oh, you can't do that because your your DM, MP, says that you can only change it by this much, and you're trying to change it by over that amount. And I was like, I can do what I want. I was always telling her that I can do whatever I want. This is my daughter,

Scott Benner 32:46
right? I don't usually say stuff like this, Jesse, but America and all, you know what I mean, like, I'm free here. Like, if I'm not hurting that kid, there's literally nothing anybody can say about how you're doing what you're doing with your child, right? We certainly were, by the way. I later, as I calmed down and went back and spoke to her, I don't even she, was trying to find out something that it wasn't even about. I was like, I'm like, I don't understand why you think this is okay. But it wasn't even anything like that. Like, you're trying to move her insulin to carb ratio to one to 15 or something, and the orders say it's one to 20, like that, like that kind of thing. It wasn't even that. Are you telling me that the school nurse for your daughter had so many opinions about how to manage her insulin and did not want or are you just telling me she didn't think you had the autonomy to make changes after it was written down both,

Jesse 33:37
both so she didn't want me to make any changes without updating, having an updated diabetic management plan. So if I wanted to change her car ratio or her basal rate for a certain time of day, because I was like, All right, so this, you know, whatever day this is, it's just not working anymore, right? She needs more insulin. That's it. Is what it is for snack time she she can't be a one to 10 anymore. She's got to go down to one to six, whatever it may be, yeah? She would say, well, we're, you can't do that unless you have the doctor fill out and sign a new diabetic medical management plan. I'm like, I'm going to do whatever I want.

Scott Benner 34:16
Yeah, also, you're, you got a little kid growing, changing all the time. Like, you know, these things are going to change, if you understand, insulin, these things are going to change frequently, if not daily. Sometimes I gotta call the doctor every time, right? Or did you just hit her with leave like, mind your business.

Jesse 34:35
No, I told her. I tried to come at it from like, a knowledgeable perspective and explain that to her, and she's like, well, I could lose my job. So I ended up going to our endo and just telling them, this is what I need you to specify on here. And she just checked a box on there that said, I think she added in an extra box because it wasn't there. She added in an extra box that said that the parent guard. In can make whatever changes she wants to. Yeah,

Scott Benner 35:02
that's the magic sentence in a 504 plan. Everyone should know that and have it in theirs. Here are all the rules, here are all the numbers, but here's the sentence for you, so the nurse doesn't feel like she's gonna get in trouble, which, you know, I can obviously understand, yeah, from the nurse position, but, but it's also in the middle of the day when you have three other kids and you're married and you're trying to, like, you know, do whatever else you're doing, and, you know, you don't need somebody stopping you every five seconds saying you can't do that, because that's all you hear. Right? What she should have said was, I understand that this is a good idea, or you think it's a good idea, but if I do that, I'm going against these written orders. We need to change these written orders so that I have more autonomy to listen to you. And then, yeah, all done. You know,

Jesse 35:44
I would get so angry. I was up at the school multiple times a week because my daughter would always come home and be like, I got in trouble because I gave myself insulin. Because I would text my daughter and say, you know, let's say you're like, she was like, 220 and I'm like, You're high. You need insulin. So I text her, and I tell her to dose, and she gives herself insulin, and then she goes to the clinic at some point, and the nurse sees that there's insulin on board and that it was dosed, you know, from her pump. And then she yells at my daughter for doing that. And I'm like,

Scott Benner 36:15
really yells at her, like, raises her voice, or just chastises her. What are we talking about? The way

Jesse 36:20
that my daughter explained it to me was that she would, she would yell at her. She would say, you cannot do that in an elevated voice. And you know, my daughter would say, my mom told me to and she said, Well, you have to listen to me at school. And then my daughter would get home, and I'd say, You don't listen to that lady. You listen to

Scott Benner 36:37
me. Hello, random lady who works at my school,

Jesse 36:42
but we have, can you

Scott Benner 36:44
imagine, in any scenario, I send my kids somewhere, my nine year old somewhere, and a person feels comfortable telling them, don't listen to your parents.

Jesse 36:53
Yeah, I know I had a big, big issue with it, so that's why last year, we actually got a new nurse after that, and she was super kind. We ended up loving her, but that's beside the point. But last year, I said, going into her school year, this was her third grade school year, I said to her Endo, hey, we're going to be done with the nurse situation, and we're just going to manage ourselves. And she said, Okay, you said, if you think that she's ready, then I think that she's ready. And I said, Okay, great. So we changed everything on her management plan to be all like char, that Charlie could do it all herself. She rocked third grade doing that. She just wore an Apple Watch and kept her phone in her backpack. And every time I would text her, she would just do what I said so she could dose when her blood sugar was high, if she was low, she was just staying in her classroom and drinking juice or having some fruit snacks at her desk,

Scott Benner 37:51
just what everyone else does who has diabetes. Yeah, yeah, but

Jesse 37:55
they wouldn't even let her treat in the classroom before, even though her plan said it, her nurse was just like, I'm still not comfortable with it when she was in second grade. And I'm like, I guess you don't understand. Like, we've been doing this for so long that she knows, yeah, when I tell her, Hey, your blood sugar is low, drink six, six sips of a juice box, that chick is going to drink six sips of a juice box. I guess she just had a hard time. And I and I get it. We're at a new school this year, actually, and her nurses are freaking out because my daughter has so much independence. They said they've never had a type one with so much independence. So her blood sugar was low yesterday after recess, because I just figured out yesterday she has snack and then goes straight out to recess. Okay, so a new school year, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm like, oh, okay, all right, so now we know that, so we're not going to be dosing accordingly, you know, we're going to change our dosing strategy to accommodate for activity outside, right? Whereas my daughter was like, oh, okay, I'm going to eat this protein bar and I'm going to dose for it, and then I'm going to go outside and 52 double arrows down was about 15 minutes later. So they called me freaking out yesterday. The nurse and I had already talked to Charlie, and she had, you know, told me, I'm I already drank half a juice box. I'm good. I'm I'm chilling inside now. But they called me and they're like, Hey, we're kind of freaking out here. We saw that her blood sugar was dropping. We just need to know, is she okay? We're gonna go see her. And I'm like, she's fine. She's already treated. And then about 10 minutes later, they text me. They're like, we're sitting with her. She looks great. I'm like,

Scott Benner 39:27
well, see now that. I think that's nice. I think that's great. Yeah, I

Jesse 39:31
had no problem with it, of course, but it was just a completely different situation this year. They're like, Hey, she has too much independence. We're not comfortable. We just want to put eyes on her. I'm like, she's okay. She'd tell me if she wasn't okay,

Scott Benner 39:44
go stare at her. That's fine, waste your time, yeah, but no. I mean, I like that 52 double hours down. I like the nurse going and looking for the kid. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah,

Jesse 39:51
no problem. But I said, Hey, would it make you all feel better if I just shot you a text message and said, I've talked to her. She's treated you know? Yeah, I'm sure it would Yes, please, please keep us in the loop. You're gonna

Scott Benner 40:03
end up building a nice relationship with them and and that's gonna be good, yeah, for sure. So tell me something about it's weird for me sometimes when I like, I know you listen to the podcast, right? So when I hear you say something and I go, Oh, I really like that idea. I don't know if it's a thought you heard from me and you're putting into practice, or if it's something you came up with, you're on your own. And as the podcast grows, I should start asking that more often, people are gonna think I'm asking to, like, get credit, but I don't. I don't mean for that. So this idea of, like, the the slow matriculation of knowledge and responsibility that I'm I'm a lot about that. I, by the way, I just think that's a good parenting skill, not necessarily a diabetes thing. Over the years, I've taken a lot of crap from older type ones. You know, when Arden was much, much younger, they'd be like, Oh, well, you do everything and she doesn't understand it. And I'm like, no, no, she understands what we're doing. I'm just not like piling it on her. Also, I just interviewed a 36 year old lady last week who sounds like she's imploding from the inside of her brain, because, you know, when she was eight years old, her parents were like, it's your disease. Take care of it and abandon her, basically. And now, as an adult, she's still struggling. And just told me a horrible story about she didn't pay attention to her blood sugar all through college. And like, you know, but, and I'm like, so, you know, it's like everything else. I think they went through something one way. They hear someone else doing it differently, and they go, Wait, do you see that's not gonna work? And it worked exceedingly well for me. But is that where you got the idea, or is it just common sense to you?

Jesse 41:36
No, I'd say it really came from seeing what happened to my brother. My brother was diagnosed at nine years he was nine years old. It was on his ninth birthday that he was diagnosed. My parents didn't teach him anything. My mom, okay. My mom, as far as diabetes goes, Bill this one's gonna die. My mom, there was so much responsibility put on him at nine years old, that it carried such a weight on him, and it has, it has really, really caused a lot of problems for him. It's a heavy weight for a kid to carry, and I can't imagine put, you know, having my daughter who, who is type one, having her carry that burden herself, and so seeing the damage that it did to my brother with all my mom did was really, she would pick up his prescription, she would drive him to his endocrinology appointments. But my brother didn't have a CGM back then. He had, you know, a little a book, and he would just have to record his blood sugars. He'd test on a meter and write it down, right? And he he did get a pump. He went through a few pumps, because he was a boy, so he broke a lot of pumps. I remember my mom really giving that responsibility to him. I really vividly remember him giving his own injections, yeah, and that was with like a syringe, not a pen, like the glass ones, yeah. And I'm like, Oh my goodness. So I saw the mental toll that it took on my brother, and with that, I've been like, okay, all right, how do I give her little chunks here and there to help her, you know, have autonomy over her type one diabetes, to understand how insulin works, to understand how her body is working, and be able to manage it as she gets older, but also not overload Her so then she's like, stuck and needs therapy, right? Great,

Scott Benner 43:23
perfect. And you're doing that, and what are you finding to be the the key to this? I feel

Jesse 43:29
like we have, like, a goal ever, or at least me, I have a goal every year of like, okay, I'm going to give her a little bit more independence here, right? So this year, last year, for example, it was we're going to ditch the nurse at school, okay? And we're going to manage together. I will tell you what to do, but you have the freedom to hey, if it pops up on your watch and says low blood glucose, you know what to do, right? You know to treat it. And just shoot me a text and say, I treated my blood sugar, and she did that this year, it's okay. I want you to start calculating your carbs or making educated guesses. You know, if you don't have the you know, if you're eating something and it doesn't have a package with carbs on it, okay, let's make an educated guess. You've been diabetic for long enough now that you should be able to look at a plate of food and be like that. Looks about 40 carbs. That looks about 25 carbs, because, you know, and I've been trying to teach her, I taught her what a Rolodex was recently, okay? I said, That's what your brain is becoming. So you need to allow your brain to become a Rolodex, right? So, just, you're adding to it all the time. So, you know, a large apple is going to be about 25 to 27 carbs. Okay, great. You know that? Plug that in? It stays in the Rolodex of your brain. You know how to dose for a banana? Because you eat bananas all these things, right? So I'm like this year, her goal is being able to look at a plate of food and be able to make an educated guess about how many carbs are on that plate. Dose for it, see how it goes. So.

Scott Benner 44:59
Nice. Do you guys practice over the summertime? Yes, all

Jesse 45:03
the time. And actually, I just switched her. She's, she's going to a hybrid school now, so she's only in school two days a week, and she's homeschooling three days a week. So that gives us even more time to to work on that. That's awesome. Good for you. You know I want Oh, and another thing, actually, she added this one on this year. Was changing her Dexcom herself. Okay? She wanted to be able to change that herself and put one on and she has put her last two Dexcom on herself. Because normally I do that for her, and she's on the T slim, so I fill her cartridges and all that. And for the last three years, she's been watching me do it, and, you know, we try to create fun videos. And like, you know, she's in that she's that age range who they love, like Tik Tok and all that stuff. Yeah, she doesn't have a tick tock, but she will make videos on her phone of herself doing stuff, oh my God, and save them for herself.

Scott Benner 45:58
Jesse, anybody who thinks that's crazy, if you look at Arden's iCloud folder from like her lifetime, it is just them making videos from the time they were little with their friends. Oh

Jesse 46:08
yeah, I did the same thing as a kid. I just wasn't doing them about type one diabetes. But you had a cell phone when you were a kid. I had a cell phone at 11 years old. How old are you? What year is it? 24 I'm 34 Oh,

Scott Benner 46:22
look at you. You're so much younger than me. It's amazing. I just did, yeah, no. I mean, seriously, I was like, you have it's the four kids thing that threw me off.

Jesse 46:30
It's the four kids. Yeah, no, I've got four kids, and I'm 34 and I definitely don't feel 34 I'll tell you that

Scott Benner 46:37
you feel older. Yes, how old were you when you had your first 24 can do basic math? You're like, I could do math before I got pregnant four times. Yeah,

Jesse 46:47
I was 23 I was 23 when he was born. I had just turned 23 and then two weeks later he was born. Wow. How old were you got married 21 Yeah. He's Yeah, yeah. I was a baby. So now I look at 21 year olds, and I'm like, You guys probably should,

Scott Benner 47:04
don't use that. Yeah, how did your husband trick you into that? Do you remember? He

Jesse 47:08
says that I tricked him? Oh, that's also

Scott Benner 47:09
possible.

Jesse 47:11
He Yeah, he says I tricked him that I I acted like I was gonna be No, I'm just kidding. I'm just joking. I'm not gonna go there. No, he does say that I tricked him into marrying me, but that's it. That's got to be a joke, because the same age, he's the one who pre Yeah, he's one year old. We have the same birthday, he's one year older. Oh,

Scott Benner 47:31
wow, look, even a person your own age, that's crazy, yeah,

Jesse 47:35
but he's the one who proposed to me, so I'm not the one who asked

Scott Benner 47:38
him. He's the one who proposed to you after, after you said, I'm leaving. And he was like, Wait, where's this girl going? No, he actually,

Jesse 47:45
you know, funny story is, we only dated for four months before he proposed. How

Scott Benner 47:50
long were you engaged? Five months. Oh, wow. Super quick. You were married in under a year of knowing each other at 22 and 21 yes, yes. And you're still married.

Jesse 48:03
We're still married. Yeah, we're about to celebrate 13 years. Interesting for you look at that, yeah, and we have four kids,

Scott Benner 48:10
yeah? Well, I mean, now no one's going anywhere, nobody can afford to live, yeah? I mean, really, yeah, that's ridiculous. Even if you wanted to, you'd be like, I don't know how to accomplish this.

Jesse 48:20
I know. And, yeah, you know, it's been a it's been crazy, because he didn't know anything about type one diabetes at all. And then our, our daughter was diagnosed, and he does, you know, we've had some hard times, and you know where we have, you know, I felt like I carry more of the burden. I say burden, but it is a burden. I'm not gonna lie, it's a burden. Um, type one diabetes is not like a cake walk, sure, but now I feel like we have a good system going. Now that you know, you've been married for a long time, right? I think

Scott Benner 48:51
my 28th anniversary was the other day, was it?

Jesse 48:56
Yeah. So, you know, like you got to communicate to make this thing work. And so I remember at one point just being like, Hey, listen, I'm do I feel like I'm doing all of this and I need help, because I can't carry the weight of it myself, and I need help. So, yeah, we share duties of, you know, like changing her her sites or and stuff like that. And he's got a calendar in his phone now, of to make sure that we change it, you know, just like a reminder that pops up every 48 hours to change it, yeah, and all that. So we share it very well now, but I would say since so I stay home with the kids, and you know, he's got a full time job, so during the day, when he's working, it's me, like I'm managing her type one all day long, she's gonna come to me first before she would ever go to him, Okay?

Scott Benner 49:42
And do you find that he's learning about it in a meaningful way? Or I had

Jesse 49:48
him at the beginning, I was like, hey, I need you to listen to this podcast. I need you to understand, you know, because I was trying to implement all these new things, yeah, and that I learned from your podcast. And I'm like, it's gonna wake make. Way more sense if you just listen to this podcast and you you hear what they're talking about, you know, like the Pro Tip series. I had him go through the Pro Tip series, yeah? And even just defining diabetes, you know, because I'm like, you know, we need to be on the same page so we can manage this

Scott Benner 50:14
together. I can't be saying words you don't understand. Yeah, I've even left

Jesse 50:18
him and gone out of town, and he's got it. Oh, I

Scott Benner 50:21
look at this. He's trainable. This is lovely. He's great. Tell me, how did he react when you said, I need you to listen to a podcast. He

Jesse 50:29
just said, Okay, can you put it on my phone? That was it? Jesse, I'm

Scott Benner 50:33
gonna say something. That's gonna sound weird here, but hopefully it won't. You were on video for five minutes when we first started. So I now know what you look like, you're pretty you could probably get boys to do what you want. I would have trouble. I tell my wife to do something, she looks at me. She goes, I don't think I'm doing that. She doesn't look at me and go, Oh, I don't want him to leave. So I guess I'm gonna accomplish something. You're working at an unfair advantage, is what I'm saying. Oh, please. Because in my mind, you say, Go listen to a podcast. And he walks out in the garage and, like, just screams into a towel. It's like, oh my god, I can't believe I have to do this.

Jesse 51:08
You know, he cares about her. And so he was like, All right, I got to learn. He's always looking to learn and grow, too. So he's like, all right, if this is what you think will help. And sure enough, it does. And you know, what's been very difficult is getting my brother to listen to the podcast.

Scott Benner 51:22
That's tougher. The he's had diabetes a long time, 27 years. No, okay, I can do basic math. You said he was 36 right? He's 36 Yeah, diagnosed when he was nine. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's excellent. I remembered all that, which I'm super impressed by. Oh yeah.

Jesse 51:39
Okay, so I did do the math, right? Yeah, keep in mind, I'm homeschooling my daughter three days a week, so that selected me,

Scott Benner 51:44
Mommy, what was the revolution? I don't know. Go ask the computer.

Jesse 51:50
I know. I'm like, Hey, you have, you know, I just recently told her. I'm like, hey, you've got a calculator on your insulin pump. You don't have to add it up in your head. Just push, okay. This package says 25 cards. Press the plus button. This package says 30 carbs. Press the plus button. Boom, you got it.

Scott Benner 52:06
It does it for you. I'm going to tell you something in about a month when Apple releases the new Siri. It's basically going to be AI. You're going to just be able to ask it like math, and it's finally going to, you know how everyone wishes Siri worked, but it doesn't, yeah. Oh, I hate Siri. It's gonna work like that now. Oh, good, yeah. So good, right now, if you ask it to add something up, it takes you to a website, and you're like, What in hell are you doing?

Jesse 52:30
I cannot stand Syria. I don't know. I have a huge problem with it. It never listens to me when I need it to listen to me, and it doesn't ever, you know, it's always like when I tell us something, like, You're not listening,

Scott Benner 52:41
it's going to be completely different very soon. So good. So T slim, you said control IQ,

Jesse 52:46
Yep, yeah, control IQ, I love it. Love, love, love it.

Scott Benner 52:49
And how did you figure out? Like, I mean, obviously started with some sort of injection, so you didn't stay with it very long. Did you go right to T slim, Was that your first

Jesse 52:57
pump? No, I we did the Omnipod. She has a pretty severe allergy to adhesive, okay, having that pot, I mean, she was, it was not working for her. And then on top of that, we have a pool in our backyard, and she was losing pods every single day. They just wouldn't stay on. We had, you know, I tried everything to keep those things on, and they would just fall off. And I said, All right, forget it. We I think we had them for four to five weeks. And then I was

Scott Benner 53:27
gonna say, Isn't it funny people's skin types? Yes, because we just got back from, like I said, we were on a vacation. It was a beach vacation. Arden does not wear over patches on her OmniPods, and she didn't have one thing, and she was literally just in the ocean constantly. Not one pod fell off, not one CGM fell off, like it just her skin just works well with the adhesive. And some people just don't,

Jesse 53:53
you know? Yeah, I do. Where, where do y'all are up north, right?

Scott Benner 53:57
I live in New Jersey, but we were, we were vacationing in the Caribbean. So, oh, okay,

Jesse 54:02
all right, so nevermind my I was gonna say, Well, maybe it's the humidity, because I live in a pretty humid environment, but, but, yeah, we're super it wasn't working for her, and I was, I was tired of it, so we switched over to the T slim, and have not gone back. She's about to be or she's about to get a new pump. Okay?

Scott Benner 54:21
She's been had it almost four years. I'm thrilled it's working for Yeah, yeah. Where are you at in your mind about the handoff of information? Like you bother yourself with an idea of, like, at this age, I'll be less involved, and at this age I won't be involved. Are you just watching it and just letting it be what it is.

Jesse 54:41
You know, I feel like I listened to a podcast that you talked about about this. This was before Arden was leaving for college. I remember listening to this one. I kind of took that to heart. My goal is by the time she's ready to leave for college is for her to be in a good place, to be able to manage what. Without me, and that's when I can be less hands on, but as long as she's, you know, and I've told her this too, as long as you're under the, you know, like our roof, and as long as you need me, I'll be there for you, and I can help you, but you need to start owning this as your own, because, unfortunately, it's not going away. I'm a realist, you know, and I'm straightforward with my kids, so, you know, with her, I'm telling her, Listen, I wish there was a cure for type one diabetes. There isn't do I think there will be. Who knows, at this point, you need to have it in your brain like, this isn't going away. This is my life, and I need to learn how to manage it. So let's take little bits, year by year to get you to a point where you don't need me and you can make decisions. Is that going to be 16 years old for her? I don't know. Is it going to be 18? I hope so, but I do think that I will always have to at least help her in the night time, you know, like calling her and stuff. I still

Scott Benner 56:01
pay attention at night at college, like I don't have to be as involved, and Arden's very good at it. But there's, I mean, there's stuff that happens. People get sick, you know, Arden sick right now, just tonsillitis, and it's terrible. And she's been sitting on the same chair in our living room for three days, and she slept there the last two nights. She can't even pull her ass up to go upstairs, to go to bed. Uh huh. If she wasn't home right now, if she was at college, she'd still be taking care of her diabetes. And last night, I mean, she's been her insulin needs have been, you know, very commiserate with fevers and, you know, and being ill and everything, she clearly has some sort of a virus happening. I texted her last night, like, 1130 I was like, Hey, I think you should test right here. Like, I think this is a time where I feel like you need a pretty big Bolus. It's getting late at night. Let's make sure that this number is super accurate before we before you make this this next Bolus, can you test? And she goes, I don't have my stuff with me. And I went, Okay, I'll get it, because she's literally having trouble standing up and moving around everything. So I said, you know, where's your bag? She carries this little bag in her purse. Has her meter and Chivo hypo pen in it, stuff like that. Let me get my text out so I can tell you what she said, Oh, where is your green bag? I don't know. Man, what I got from that was, dude, I'm sick, like, you know, and just because you have diabetes doesn't mean you don't get sick and have that feeling of, like, I don't want to do this. Yeah, right, she's gonna be okay. There will be a day where you're not involved in Charlie's life, by the way, I can't, oh,

Jesse 57:33
yeah. I mean, my brother, you know, he takes care of himself when he's sick and and stuff like that. But I think it's always helpful to have extra eyes, you know. And you know, like he has his wife who follows Him. But you

Scott Benner 57:46
also alluded to the fact that he maybe could be helping himself more than he is, right? No,

Jesse 57:51
he has great management, but he has been diabetic for so long that he's like, I know all there is to know. I know my body. Like, I don't need to know anymore. He's like, I got this. He's like, that, that Russian guy who was shooting at the Olympics. He's like, walking out there with nothing.

Scott Benner 58:09
Is he really having those outcomes?

Jesse 58:11
It's been an interesting last two years of diabetes for my brother, because he was diagnosed also with type two as well. So he's now on a GLP, and it has taken over a year to find the right one that works for him and dosage and stuff like that. So, you know, he did a whole year of like, titrating a certain GLP that wasn't doing anything. And then he finally, you know, I did convince him to, hey, maybe you need a different endocrinologist who will listen to you. And so he switched endocrinologists, and that endocrinologist put him on a different GLP, and now he's doing great. His insulin needs have dropped dramatically. Blood sugar is now chilling around closer to 75 to 120 he has hardly any highs.

Scott Benner 59:01
That's awesome. Oh, I'm glad, yeah. Hey, listen, uh, not that this means anything, but Turkish, oh yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. And this will be six months later. So you're referring to the guy in the whatever they using, like, air, air, like handguns, right? He just rolls up, like everyone else has, like, protective wear, protective wear on all this stuff. He just kind of rolls up and pulls his gun out, like Dirty Harry, and he's like, get me a medal.

Jesse 59:28
That was the best thing ever. There's been a lot, there's been a lot of good stuff from the Olympics. You

Scott Benner 59:33
know, who I feel badly for? The female Australia break dancer. I actually, I'm starting to feel bad for her, actually, yeah,

Jesse 59:40
no, she's my favorite. They knew what they were doing. They're like, we're gonna send this 40 something year old professor to be a break dancer for our country.

Scott Benner 59:50
I think they dropped it from the Olympics already, by the way. Oh yeah, they did. Yeah, yeah. They were like, we're not doing this again. Sorry.

Jesse 59:56
That's a bummer, because it made for really good TV. I mean. And I was like, wow, I can watch dance offs, you know,

Scott Benner 1:00:04
I love she went home and did it again. Like, out on the street, they did a video of her and put it online. I was like, oh my god, stop doing this.

Jesse 1:00:13
Like, maybe she's my favorite. Maybe

Scott Benner 1:00:15
you're making sense. Maybe they're all in on the joke, you know what I mean? Because, yeah, little weird hand motions and body stylings. I'm like, You shouldn't be doing this. This is this looks like me doing this. Like, what do you I

Jesse 1:00:27
know I'm definitely gonna take that some of her moves to my son's middle school dance when I chaperone it and see, see if I can embarrass him a little bit. I

Scott Benner 1:00:35
like when she lays down to spin, she almost stops moving break the about that is she looks like she's gonna break her hip. Very ridiculous. Anyway. Is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have not

Jesse 1:00:49
that I can think of. What was the other subject I told you about?

Scott Benner 1:00:53
You blended advocating for yourself and not letting school nurses tell you what to do, and you about passing. So you kind of blended them together when you started talking,

Jesse 1:01:02
yeah. I was Yeah, yeah. I think I think we covered it. Let me

Scott Benner 1:01:06
just ask you a couple other questions then real quick, because we know your brother has type one, but do you have any other autoimmune things? Or does your husband or people on either side of your families,

Jesse 1:01:15
I have Hashimotos so and then I did tell you, I was one of five. So four out of five of us have hypothyroidism, okay? And both my parents hypothyroidism, wow, yeah, those are, I know. I was just talking to my oldest brother the other day, and he was like, I am the only one without hypothyroidism. This is, you know, I'm just watching it, you know.

Scott Benner 1:01:39
He's like, it's coming. I think, you know, I told him, but he's,

Jesse 1:01:42
you know, he's eight years older than me, and I'm like, Man, I bet you have it. And you just don't know.

Scott Benner 1:01:47
I was gonna say, why would he not take a look he has? But I did

Jesse 1:01:51
tell him. I said, you need to, you know? He said he's just been asking his getting blood work done at his primary care physician's office. And I said they're just testing your TSH levels. You need to go in and they're

Scott Benner 1:02:04
going to say, like, up to an eight is okay, or something like that, correct, yeah. And so

Jesse 1:02:08
I did. I was explaining that to him the other day about, you know, you need to check your your T for your t3 and then you need to see how, like, where your TSH levels are, because, you know, you could be there. They're within range. You know, the normal range is such a broad range, yeah, and I can have my TSH be within range and not feel optimally, right? So does he have symptoms? That could be the problem for you as well. And then, if they're not checking your T for your free T for, they're not tech checking those things, yeah, you're not getting the full picture. Yeah, you want

Scott Benner 1:02:43
a full panel for I have a family friend I'm trying to help now, and she's younger, so she's, you know, running into doctors who aren't helping her, and she's not real good at, you know, arguing back yet, kind of walking her through it. But, you know, she's five six hypothyroid symptoms, and they're changing her life, like, significantly, you know, her TSH, comes back at like, over five, and the doctor's like, that's normal. And I was like, That's not normal, right? And she said, Oh, she retested it and it came back at 2.5 and I'm like, Yeah, that's still not normal, right? And then they tested it again, it was 4.4 and I was like, Yeah, you need, like, thyroid medication, right? And the doctor is like, No, you don't. This is all very normal. Like, it, I don't know what world you think this is normal. Like, I know.

Jesse 1:03:29
I keep telling, I told my brother, Hey, you gotta this other one. I was like, Hey, you gotta go see an endocrinologist. If you're I'm not hating on the medical community at all. He doesn't specialize in that. You know, your primary care physician does not specialize in this, so you need to go see somebody who can look at a thyroid panel. Know what labs to pull right and then be thoughtful, actually, yeah, know what they're talking about, because they're focused on

Scott Benner 1:03:54
we need these doctors to be more specific about these tests, because we need them to do more like I'm telling you, I'm going to be right about this in the next handful of years, as GLP medications become available for type ones and they become available in vials, we're going to need doctors to tell you, Hey, listen, you know, back in the day when this all started, you know, the lowest dose of this you could get was 2.5 milligrams, but that's too much for you. Like, you know, like, we need you to do a milligram. And I don't want you to do it every seven days. I want you to do it every, I don't know, five days, 10 days, whatever ends up optimally working for you. But if you look at how little doctors are valuable in dosing your insulin, then you're going to realize how invaluable most of them are going to be with your thyroid medication and then with this, I mean, this GLP thing, like Arden has insane benefits from it, but the lowest dose is too much for her, right? So we're literally in the middle of figuring all of that out. We and I have a doc. I think I know what to do, but we're waiting a few days for her doctor's appointment where we're going to go sit down with her doctor and discuss all this. We're. Because she needs it, but not that much. She lost too much weight, and she had too, too hard of a time eating. And so where most people just go, oh, well, I, you know, it didn't work. I because I can't eat. I'm like, no, no, it nine out of the 10 things we wanted out of this worked great. One of the things didn't work, like, let's right, change the dose, yeah, you know. And luckily, we have a doctor who will be like, yeah, that's sensible. Let's figure that out, right?

Jesse 1:05:27
Yeah, it's hard to find, you know, I feel like you have to find the right doctor who's willing to work with you. Like I said earlier, our endo works with us, you know, and not, you know, we're on the same team, instead of, you know, fighting against us. And I've had endos who were like, you know, I know more than you. And there's been times where I'm like, No, I'm no more than you when it comes to this.

Scott Benner 1:05:47
So why does it matter? Like, let's just work together and figure it out.

Jesse 1:05:50
Yeah, yeah. I just remember arguing with my you know, we're arguing about technology and stuff, and I'm like, No, that's not how this insulin pump work. Also,

Scott Benner 1:05:57
forget doctors. Good luck finding people that can think through complex things in any walk of life, not just not just your doctor, you know what? I mean, we have a greater expectation for them, but they're just people. It's not right. I mean, so anyway, right?

Jesse 1:06:10
And you know, I feel like they don't get the pump draining that they need. You know, they pass that off to their diabetes educators in their office if they have them. But I feel like my endocrinologist should be, endocrinologist should be knowledgeable about the pump that is being, you know, my daughter's using, and my new one is, it

Scott Benner 1:06:27
doesn't seem crazy to ask for that, right, right? Yeah, could you know how she's great? Would you mind taking 15 minutes and teaching yourself this? Yeah,

Jesse 1:06:37
we're actually our next pump is going to be the Moby. I'm super excited. Oh yeah, we tried to get the Moby our our endo told us, like, six months ago, she's like, Oh, okay, they're tandems rolling out this new thing this summer, where, if you have the x2 and you want to upgrade to the Moby, they will do that for you at no charge. And then, you know, the following year, they'll, you get charged for it or whatever. Oh, some upgrade program, something like that. Well, I called and I submitted the forms for it, and then they called me back, and they're like, oh, you can't do that. You have to be 12 months from your you have to have at least 12 months left of your warranty to upgrade. Okay? And you have 11 months. So sorry, you're denied. I'm like,

Scott Benner 1:07:24
Are you serious? Those are all making sense. That's fine, yeah.

Jesse 1:07:27
Like, okay, that was, uh, took you three weeks to get process the paperwork, so let's backdate it.

Scott Benner 1:07:33
Well, let's just take four more weeks and give it to

Jesse 1:07:35
me. Yeah, I know. So yeah, you'll

Scott Benner 1:07:39
end up with it eventually. Yeah, she's

Jesse 1:07:41
gonna get it in the new year. So we're, I'm super excited. It's the same system as the x2

Scott Benner 1:07:47
Yeah, it's the same algorithm. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, that's exciting. Again, I'm I anytime people get things that work good for them, I think that's, I think having those choices is a minimum of what we should be asking for. So, right, right. Absolutely fantastic. All right. Well, Jesse, you were great. I appreciate you doing this with me. Thank you very much. Thank you. It was so it was so fun. Did you have a good time?

Jesse 1:08:09
Yeah, yeah. I loved it. And I feel like I could talk diabetes forever. And I feel like the first, I don't know if you remember this the first time I ever talked to you. You talked to me on the phone shortly after my daughter was diagnosed. I don't know if there's no way you remember this, but I remember this, and she had just been diagnosed, and I had reached out to you, and you were super kind, and you were like, can I just call you? It'll make more sense if I call you and you talk to me on the phone. And that's when I first realized too, because her her Endo, at the time, had said, Oh, she I want you to treat her blood sugar if it's 100 or below, yeah. And when I talk to you, you're like, 100 is fine. And I was like, Oh, it is fine.

Scott Benner 1:08:53
Yeah, yeah.

Jesse 1:08:55
I don't know. I just remember it. And you were super, you're super kind. Well, first

Scott Benner 1:08:59
of all, I'm fantastic. And I think everyone knows that you didn't have to bring it up, but I don't remember. I apologize for not remembering, but I think what I hear you say is that if everybody could just talk to me for a half an hour when they were diagnosed, they'd be okay.

Jesse 1:09:11
Yep, yep. You put me on the right track, and it was great. And I'm super thankful for your podcast because, and I tell everybody I know that's been diagnosed, like you've got to just listen to this, like I could talk your ear off, but just listen to this will be easier. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:25
no, I appreciate that very much. And it's funny. I was trying to be funny, but at the same time, I do think that I have it down to a brisk 40 minutes that I can, like, put you on the right path. Yeah, I

Jesse 1:09:37
honestly, I think you and I talked on the phone for 20 minutes, if that, and I was like, I feel way better about this

Scott Benner 1:09:46
situation. Good, good. I'm glad. All right, that's excellent. Well, thanks so much for doing this with me. Yeah, thank you. Okay, cool. Hold on one second for me,

I'd like to thank the ever. Sense 365 for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and remind you that if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every 14 days, you want the ever since CGM, ever since cgm.com/juice, box, one year, one CGM, guys, you want to go for a walk with touch by type one in Orlando, you can do it and you can have a great time. Meet a lot of wonderful people touched by type one.org, go to the programs tab, click on Steps to a cure, and get yourself registered right now for the beautiful walk that's coming up on March 8 in Orlando. Touched by type one.org, earlier you heard me talking about blue circle health, the free virtual type one diabetes care, education and support program for adults. And I know it sounds too good to be true, but I swear it's real. Thanks to funding from a big T 1d philanthropy group, blue circle health doesn't bill your insurance or charge you a cent. In other words, it's free. They can help you with things like carb counting, insurance navigation, diabetes technology, insulin adjustments, peer support, Prescription Assistance and much more. So, if you're tired of waiting nine months to get in with your endo or your educator, you can get an appointment with their team within one to two weeks. This program is showing what T 1d care can and should look like. Blue circle health is currently available in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. If you live in one of those states, go to bluecircle health.org to sign up today. The link is in the show notes, and please help me to spread the word blue circle health. Had to buy an ad because people don't believe that it's free, but it is. They're trying to give you free care if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. It's ready to go right now. And like I said, they're adding states so quickly in 2025 that you want to follow them on social media at Blue circle health, and you can also keep checking blue circle health.org to see when your free care is available to you. Hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast if you're living with type one diabetes, the after dark collection from the Juicebox Podcast is the only place to hear the stories that no one else talks about from drugs to depression, self harm, trauma, addiction and so much more. Go to Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and click on after dark there, you'll see a full list of all of the after dark episodes. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way recording.com, so.

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#1436 Life Coach: Doesn't Remember to Bolus

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12 year old Kyler tries to figure out why he doesn't remember to bolus.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends. You are listening to the Juicebox Podcast.

Kyler is 12 years old. He has type one diabetes. His mom brought him on the podcast because he has trouble remembering to Bolus for his food sometimes. And so Kyler and I have a conversation, and we come up with a plan, and this is that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but blue circle health is a non profit that's offering a totally free virtual type one diabetes clinical care, education and support program for adults 18 and up. You heard me right, free. No strings attached, just free. Currently, if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama or Missouri, you're eligible for blue circle health right now, but they are adding states quickly in 2025 so make sure to follow them at Blue circle health on social media and make yourself familiar with blue circle health.org. Blue circle health is free. It is without cost. There are no strings attached. I am not hiding anything from you. Blue circle health.org, you know why they had to buy an ad no one believes it's free. The episode you're about to enjoy was brought to you by Dexcom, the Dexcom g7 the same CGM that my daughter wears. You can learn more and get started today at my link, dexcom.com/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. Hey,

Kyler 2:00
my name is Kyler Davis. I'm 12 years old, playing baseball.

Scott Benner 2:05
Kyler, how old were you when you got type one, five years old, five. So seven years ago? 910, yeah. Okay, so you were five. Do you have any brothers or sisters? Yeah, I have a eight year old brother. Does he have diabetes? He does not. No, does anybody else in your family?

Speaker 1 2:23
No, I'm the first one in the family to get the type one. Gotcha,

Scott Benner 2:27
that's not exciting, huh? No, no. How to make you feel like, when do you remember that time? Or do you not remember it really?

Speaker 1 2:36
I mean, I like vacantly remember it. What are your recollections it was kind of scary. Mean, I didn't really know what was happening to five years old.

Scott Benner 2:50
What about now? How is it different now?

Speaker 1 2:53
Oh, I'm just really used to it now, because I've had it for seven years.

Scott Benner 2:57
So you don't think about it the same way. You're not scared by it. No, no no. Does it make you feel different at all, or not in a way that bothers you? It doesn't really bother me. Okay, you have any problems with kids, anybody? Give you crap about it.

Speaker 1 3:11
I mean, my friends like we joke about it, but I don't really care.

Scott Benner 3:15
Is it joking in a way that you feel like you're in on, or do you feel like they're making in on? Yeah, not like they're making fun of you and you have to have to go along with it, or something like that. Okay, yeah, awesome. You have a good group of friends. Yeah, I have a great group of friends. Awesome. Awesome. How long you've been playing baseball since I was probably four or five? No kidding. What position do you play? Second base and outfield. Second base in outfield? Are you lefty? Righty, righty, right handed. Do you love it? Oh, yeah, I love baseball. Yeah, you gotta love baseball. It's a lot of work, yeah, a lot of hours out in the sun and the heat and batting cages in the winter time and all that stuff. Tell me about it. Yeah, my son played all through college. Wow, yeah, it's cool. It's over now. He's like, 24 but gosh, my son started playing baseball. He hadn't quite turned four years old yet, and he was in this little T ball League, and he played that for a year, and then he played little league well now. Then he played at the YMCA for another year, and then he went to, like, our town's little league when he was six, yeah. And he played there from 678-910-1112, then Little League ended at 12, and then they played a ton of travel ball, and played for his middle school, and has played for his high school. And then he went on and played in college, and I've spent a lot of time on a baseball field, so yeah, you definitely have to love it. Do you think you think you love it enough to keep playing? Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't know how to ask this. Are you a big kid? Not really. No, no, you're pretty average size. Do you think Asia, Yeah, mom or dad, tall? Do you have any hope of being tall?

Unknown Speaker 4:51
No, my parents are really short.

Scott Benner 4:55
It's their fault, then Kyler, not yours. So yeah, you're gonna try to keep playing for your school. Yeah,

Speaker 1 5:00
yeah, my middle school doesn't have a team right now. Oh, we have fields, but they're for the high school. So

Scott Benner 5:06
what are you going to do for

Speaker 1 5:08
baseball? I'm playing on a travel ball team right now. That's awesome.

Scott Benner 5:12
You guys like play in the spring and the fall? Yeah, that's great. That's good. That's good baseball, all right. Well, that's that's awesome. How do you find your blood sugars during games? I

Speaker 1 5:23
usually just check it when I'm like, the dugout, batting or on bench.

Scott Benner 5:28
Yeah. Do you have problems with lows while you're playing or highs? Or do you usually do you have, like, a system where you stay pretty level

Speaker 1 5:35
when I go low, my mom usually just brings me a snack in the dugout.

Scott Benner 5:40
Yeah. Have you ever felt low, like, while you're out on the field?

Unknown Speaker 5:43
No, not really,

Scott Benner 5:44
actually. Okay, that's good. What's the gear you use for your diabetes? You have a CGM or a pump or anything like that, yeah,

Speaker 1 5:50
pump and a CGM. What do you use? Omnipod five and the Dexcom six?

Scott Benner 5:57
So it's algorithm. It's taking care of, like, some of your decisions for you, yeah, yeah. What did you have before that? Before Omnipod five? I think I started with it, yeah, I started with it. Omnipod five was your first pump. So what have you had, like, two years, maybe, yeah, okay, all right. How did you like that over injections? Oh,

Speaker 1 6:16
it's so much better. Okay, how come guys, you don't have to stab yourself every day. Pretty much, staying

Scott Benner 6:23
away from the stabby part is the good part. I hear you so your mom reached out. Why? Like? Why? Because she she sent me a note pretty quickly. I think I said I was looking for people to be on episodes about, like, I don't understand, like, something they don't understand. And I think she said, Did she tell you what she told me? No, I have no idea what she said. Is she right there? Yeah, ask her. What did what did she say to me? What'd you say?

Unknown Speaker 6:51
Oh, she understands why I dose when I eat. She

Scott Benner 6:53
doesn't understand why you dose, why you eat. Okay, all right, okay, so, all right. So, Kylie, do you think that's a fair statement. Do you not give yourself insulin every time you eat? Yeah, okay, that's pretty honest. Do you have any idea why you don't? It's hard to keep track of every day you eat. Number times a day, what happens you like, you get hungry, and then, like, walk me through it a little

Speaker 1 7:19
bit. I get hungry, I'll grab the snack then, like, I just eat it without dosing. Yeah? Because

Scott Benner 7:27
you're not thinking about it. Or do you? Yeah? Do you ever ignore it on purpose? No, you've never once grabbed food and thought, I know I should be giving myself insulin, but screw it. I'm not doing that maybe once, but not that that's not a frequent thought that's in your head. No. So what do you think happens? Do you think it's just you're just busy living and it just doesn't occur to you? Yeah. What happens then, if you don't give yourself insulin? Like, who figures out that you didn't do it? How does that work itself out? My dad. But how like? How is he like? He doesn't just magically, I mean, is he does he look across the room at you and be like, Kyler is eating. I see he's eating. He's definitely not giving himself insulin. Kyler give yourself insulin. Or is it a thing where your blood sugar goes up and then people are aware of it?

Speaker 1 8:16
My blood sugar goes up, okay? And

Scott Benner 8:19
then how high does it go up before somebody notices? Do you know, probably 250 How do you feel when your blood sugar is that high? Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omnipod. And before I tell you about Omnipod, the device, I'd like to tell you about Omnipod, the company. I approached Omnipod in 2015 and ask them to buy an ad on a podcast that I hadn't even begun to make yet because the podcast didn't have any listeners, all I could promise them was that I was going to try to help people living with type one diabetes, and that was enough for Omnipod. They bought their first ad, and I used that money to support myself while I was growing the Juicebox Podcast. You might even say that Omnipod is the firm foundation of the Juicebox Podcast, and it's actually the firm foundation of how my daughter manages her type one diabetes every day. Omnipod.com/juicebox whether you want the Omnipod five or the Omnipod dash. Using my link, let's Omnipod know what a good decision they made in 2015 and continue to make to this day. Omnipod is easy to use, easy to fill, easy to wear. And I know that because my daughter has been wearing one every day since she was four years old, and she will be 20 this year, there is not enough time in an ad for me to tell you everything that I know about Omnipod, but please take a look omnipod.com/juicebox I think Omnipod could be a good friend to you, just like it has been to my daughter and my family. You can manage diabetes, confident. With the powerfully simple Dexcom g7 dexcom.com/juicebox the Dexcom g7 is the CGM that my daughter is wearing. The g7 is a simple CGM system that delivers real time glucose numbers to your smartphone or smart watch. The g7 is made for all types of diabetes, type one and type two, but also people experiencing gestational diabetes, the Dexcom g7 can help you spend more time in range, which is proven to lower a 1c The more time you spend in range, the better and healthier you feel. And with the Dexcom clarity app, you can track your glucose trends. And the app will also provide you with a projected a 1c in as little as two weeks. If you're looking for clarity around your diabetes, you're looking for Dexcom. Dexcom.com/juice box. When you use my link, you're supporting the podcast. Dexcom.com/juice box. Head over there. Now I get hot. Hot, like, sweaty, yeah, okay. And then what happens? Like, your parents come up to you and they're like, Hey, you didn't like, do they give you crap about it? Or are they pretty cool? How do they handle it? Yeah, they give me crap. Has it ever occurred to you to be like, I should just probably give myself insulin, and then none of this would happen. Yeah, tell me why that doesn't happen?

Unknown Speaker 11:23
Probably because,

Scott Benner 11:25
take your time. I'm being serious. Take your time and think about it, because you very well might not know, but I'm looking for your opinion, like, how come you can't make that change? I'm like, tired of doing it. Ah, okay. It's been too much, too long. Yeah. Okay, so I know you're just, I don't mean to say you're only 12, but 12 is pretty young. And, you know, diabetes is a, certainly a big responsibility, and you've already been living with it for seven years, you've come to the conclusion, I imagine, this is going to be for the rest of your life. Do you feel like that? Yes. Okay. And are you aware of why it's important to not manage your meals the way you are right now? Like how much of the health part of diabetes Do you understand?

Unknown Speaker 12:14
Probably 75 80%

Scott Benner 12:17
if I said to you, Kyler, we don't want your blood sugars to be 250 every time you eat. Do you know why we don't want that?

Speaker 1 12:24
Yeah, because then it will jack up my immune system.

Scott Benner 12:29
Well, there's more to it. So your blood sugar bouncing around like that, going high and then coming back down. Does it get low after you you fix the high blood sugar? Sometimes, sometimes, yeah, yeah, right. Then you got to eat food. You don't want to bring it back up again, like that. Bouncing is just generally speaking, not good for your body. And higher blood sugars are, you know, like, I know you can go to a 250 blood sugar, and it's not, you know, it's not like something horrible. You don't have to run to the hospital, right? But that, over and over again is slowly doing, you know, damage to your health. And so while you're sitting there, probably thinking, like, I don't what the big deal is, the thing beeped, I gave myself insulin, like it's over now, like your parents are thinking about, like, long term. They're thinking about stuff you can't even, like, imagine yet. Like, do you know how old your parents are? They're probably really old. Do you know how old they are? Yeah, they're like, 50 and 60. Oh, my God, they're almost dead. It's crazy. What they do have? What do you like, the last of 17 kids? Or something? Kyler, what happened there would your parents start having kids later in life? I'm just joking. Oh, they're not that old. Oh, okay,

Unknown Speaker 13:43
my mom made me tell you that I'm joking.

Scott Benner 13:45
How old are they? You know, 43

Unknown Speaker 13:48
and my mom's 39 it's

Scott Benner 13:51
still pretty old they, I mean, they probably, like, get up off the couch and they're, like, creaky, right? And they don't move too fast, yeah, no, no, it's almost over. I barely ever seen my mom get off the couch, yo. She just lives there. Yeah, yeah. She's not out walking, going for a run, anything like that.

Speaker 1 14:07
I've never seen her do that. Once in my life. Does

Scott Benner 14:10
she sit at all your games? Oh, yeah, she sits down. Kyler, you're awesome. Okay, so your parents are thinking long term, right? They've been alive 40 years. They have perspective on life you don't have yet. You won't have it for a long time, right? Like it's hard for a young person to worry about the future, to consider the future, even, because in your world, life's only been 12 years old, 12 years long so far. So they are really thoughtfully trying to set you up to be healthy for a very long time. They also probably want you to have good habits so that when you're older, and maybe, you know, maybe you're on like a, I don't know, maybe your travel team goes away to Florida to play, or something like that for a week, or maybe you end up at college or something that you know how to take care of your health. Yeah. And like I would imagine, I've got a daughter who's 20 years old, who's had diabetes since she was two. And, I mean, that's still my goal is, is to help her understand the things that she's going to need to know to be healthy forever. Now, day to day, that's hard to keep in mind while people are, you know, it feels like they're bugging you about stuff. I think your bigger concern probably is trying to figure out how to not feel like you're sick of it like I think the goal you should have is try to is, how do you like fold diabetes into your day to day life, so that it doesn't feel like a chore while you're doing the things that are are important for you. You know what I mean? Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, good, yeah, good. What are you gonna say?

Speaker 1 15:50
It's just like, you just gotta fit it in, yeah? Like you have all these things going on and then just gonna squeeze it in, like it's priority number one, but

Scott Benner 16:00
the trick is to not feel like it's extra like. So I think, you know, if I told you you were gonna go cross the street today, like you wouldn't think like looking left, right, left was like a burden, you'd say that's an obvious thing I need to do so that I can get across the street safely, like you wouldn't just I couldn't take you to the curb and just say, hey, Kyler, shut your eyes and run for it like you wouldn't do that. You'd be like, No, I don't want to get hit by a car. I'm not interested in that. But I think that the idea of not bolusing for your meals very consistently, it does to your parents, feel like you're shutting your eyes and running across the street, that makes sense? Yeah, yeah. So now, how do you like now it's not the answer. We don't want you to feel bad about it. We don't want you to feel overwhelmed about it. Like, that's not the goal, like nobody's trying to make you feel bad. How do you make the decision that Bolus thing for food is brushing your teeth is looking both ways, like, how do we turn it into a thing that just happens without you having to feel like it's a burden or an extra thing you're doing? Do you think that's possible? Yeah, how would you go about it? Do you think like if you had to set a plan up for you to feel better about that? I mean, what would that look like to you?

Speaker 1 17:22
Like, set and be certain times to eat and then no Bolus right before them. So

Scott Benner 17:30
if you had set meal times, you think it would help you to, like, make sure your your insulin was in. Well, I've seen people put notes on the refrigerator that just say Pre Bolus, like stuff like that, like little reminders. Because, Kyler, listen, you don't know me, you know what I mean. But I'm, like, childish in my mind still and like, I understand, I understand that you get busy. You're thinking about things you know you're not interested in, like this just sucks. Like I've I've interviewed adults from, you know, 20, 3040, 5060, years old. They all have type one diabetes, and that they almost all agree that Pre Bolus in their meals sucks, that having to remember to give yourself insulin before you eat is not fun, like but they'll also all tell you that it's a really important part of living healthy with diabetes. Now, if I was going to try to talk you into it, what I would say is this, the couple of minutes that it takes to give yourself insulin before you eat saves you so much trouble on the back end, right? It saves a 250 blood sugar. It saves that conversation with your dad. It saves you getting low later, from the from the mistimed insulin that caused the correction. It saves you from having to eat crap you don't want, drinking a juice box you don't want, like. It saves you from all of those things. It just to me, seems worth it to trade that couple of minutes of thought before the meal for all the crap that comes when you don't do it. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, maybe it's important to think about it like that. Like, it's, you're not giving something up. You're actually you're getting a lot back instead. Yeah, 100% Yeah, right. Like, your time and, like, you know? I mean, how many times have you been hanging out with friends or something and like your mom, like has to walk in the room with a juice box or candy? And like you don't, you probably feel like a baby when that happens, right? Yeah, yeah, you're not looking for that. So, like, by taking control of your meals and putting yourself in charge, you're not just avoiding those problems, those potential problems, but you're also giving yourself control, like you're in charge of this going well, instead of just acting like diabetes just happens to me, and you know it's not up to me, like you can make decisions, like you can take control your of your life and make decisions. Questions that give you the ability to write the story about how the rest of your day goes. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. What do you like to do for fun, besides baseball, play video games? Which ones Call of Duty? You got the new one with the new zombies? They put the zombies back the way they're supposed to be. I heard Yeah. You like the zombie ones, the the maps are. Now,

Speaker 1 20:24
I'm not a huge fan of the zombies. Do you like scary movies?

Scott Benner 20:28
Yeah? Do Yeah, I don't like scary movies at all. They scare me, I think is probably why. But so you like scary movies, but don't like the zombie maps? No, because the zombies aren't shooting back,

Speaker 1 20:42
no. It's just, I don't really like the, like the setting and the the way it's laid out. I got

Scott Benner 20:47
you, you prefer the more traditional maps, yeah, yeah. Do you get online with friends and talk to them while you're uh while you're playing? Yeah? Do you like use the headphones to gang up on people and, like, make plans and stuff like that? Uh huh, yeah. It's pretty great. Do you do the um, the achievement stuff to like, level up the weapons and the gear and stuff, or do you guys not do that?

Unknown Speaker 21:08
We do it sometimes.

Scott Benner 21:09
Yeah. Which gun do you prefer to use? Probably the Mk, don't tell me your game gamer handle, but do you like it? Yeah, yeah. All right. You don't want people hunting down Call of Duty. Do No, no, no. Okay, so it's not lost on me Kyler, that this is not a conversation that most 12 year olds have to have. You know what? I mean? No, probably not. Yeah. It sucks a little bit, but I will tell you this, I've talked to a lot of people who have type one diabetes who grew up with it, and they will tell you later in life that having type one although they don't want it, and they would obviously get rid of it if they could, but it does teach them to be more mature or thoughtful that oftentimes people with type One diabetes are not so easily shaken by life events, because they know what it is to like live through a tough thing. Do you know what I mean? Like, do you have any of those feelings like, do you see any of the value in diabetes?

Unknown Speaker 22:10
Yeah, it gets me out of class.

Scott Benner 22:14
How does it get you out of class? When

Speaker 1 22:16
my blood goes low, I get called down. I get to miss math class.

Scott Benner 22:20
Yeah. Get shot. Do you not like math? Oh no. What subjects do you like reading? Do you enjoy fiction? Non fiction? What kind of reading Do you like non fiction? So like sci fi, not really

Unknown Speaker 22:34
like history, history?

Scott Benner 22:36
Oh no kidding, like historical stories or actual like, just this is what happened in the past. Like, this is like both kind of, what are some of your favorite historical events World War Two? What about it? What do you like about about learning about it? I like learning about the Nazis and what they were doing.

Unknown Speaker 23:02
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the trust.

Scott Benner 23:05
I believe you. So what about that? Like, is it hard for you to believe that, that a group of people would were being that horrible? Yeah, weird, isn't it? So you're trying to get a feeling for like, what, like, how, how that could happen? Yeah. Do you find yourself to be a kind person in your regular life? Yeah? Yeah. Do you have trouble with people who aren't kind?

Speaker 1 23:33
Yeah, I deal with them how so kind of talk some sense into them. You

Scott Benner 23:40
find yourself kind of trying to be a voice of reason for people when they're they're being maybe unkind.

Unknown Speaker 23:47
Yeah, I take charge.

Scott Benner 23:49
Does that work? Do you have you had luck talking people into, uh, into maybe acting better? Yeah, I have no kidding. Can you share one of those experiences with me? I mean,

Speaker 1 24:00
they're like, I'm in Boy Scouts, and they're these, ton of their kids, they're always yelling at each other, and one of the scout leaders told me I had to take charge, like, so I just stepped in. They all kind of like, shut down. Yeah.

Scott Benner 24:17
What did you offer to them? What advice did you give them in that moment?

Speaker 1 24:21
I was like, You're not going to get anywhere with just yelling at each other.

Scott Benner 24:25
Did they do it a different way, or did they just kind of shut off and stop? They kind of just shut off and stop. Yeah, you think they weren't maybe accustomed to being redirected like that? No, yeah. Are you what happens when somebody redirects you? Do you you respond usually, or do you shut off?

Speaker 1 24:43
I do it. I I'm a great listener. Yeah,

Scott Benner 24:48
always been since you were little. Yeah, you like following rules. Like, does it make you? Does it make you uncomfortable to break rules? No, I always follow the rules. You do, except. Are the Pre Bolus in your meals? Yeah, pretty much you change your pumps when you're supposed to. Or do you let them go to the last second and then you're like, Oh, I guess I'll do it. Now, I

Unknown Speaker 25:09
changed my pumps when I'm supposed to.

Scott Benner 25:12
What's your high alarm set out like, when does your CGM beep at you? 250 probably. 250 okay. Do you know what your a 1c is, 7.1 Okay, are you mostly managing it on your own, or your parents still helping? My

Speaker 1 25:26
dad usually helps a lot. Yeah, like I said, my mom just sits on the couch all day,

Scott Benner 25:31
the old couch, lady, like, 60s, five years old, yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand your dad is the one who's a little more involved with your blood sugar. Yeah. Do you know why that is like, Have you guys ever discussed why your dad's the one who helps more than your mom? No, not really. No. Do you like it that way? Or do you wish they were both more involved? I was they were both involved. Do you think your dad understands it better than your mom does? Or do you think, yeah, he does, yeah, how did he learn about it? Did he ever tell you? No,

Speaker 1 26:04
he never. He just, like, after like, a year, he was, like, an expert, yeah,

Scott Benner 26:09
he figured it out. Interesting. Okay, so if you were to go to your mom, like we were in Cub Scout or in Boy Scouts, and tell her that you wanted her to be more involved, like, what would you share with her? Like, why? Why that's important to you? I mean,

Speaker 1 26:24
she's, like, involved pretty much, but I feel like my dad is just, like, a little more involved. So I'd probably say just like, can you get involved, like, a little bit more? Yeah,

Scott Benner 26:35
is she in the room right now? Yeah. Is this uncomfortable?

Speaker 1 26:39
Yeah, yeah, she's yelling at me for saying these things. Is she

Scott Benner 26:43
eyeball on you right now? Yes, giving you the look, that's okay, we're tell her, we're getting to it. Do we gonna figure out? Like, we're gonna figure out how to make a trade off here? So if you'd like her to do something, and she'd like you to do something, right? Yeah, she wants you to, like, Well, I mean, you're here for. Why? Because the Bolus thing, right? She wants you to, like, be more cognizant about bolusing for your meals, and remember to do that stuff. And you'd like her to do something too. So maybe when you guys, like, maybe when you get off here, you guys could have that conversation and just talk about that, like, simple thing, like, look, I think I could be more aware of my Bolus thing for my meals. I wish you could be a little more involved. Like, so let's try to think Kyler, like, how could she be more involved that would help you Bolus at your meals to remind me better, yeah, that's a lot to remember, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's overwhelming. Sometimes I imagine, oh, yeah, yeah. So, see, we found this perfect balance. I think this is our answer, if I'm being honest. Like, I think that, like, this is our answer, which is, I think your mom wants you to Pre Bolus, because it would be healthier for you, but also because it would be less turmoil in your house, right? And she also wants to think that you're learning well enough to help yourself as you get older, like I understand all of her desires, I think, and I think that it's possible that after seven years in such a long time of having type one diabetes, that maybe it's easy to forget that you're just 12 and that, yes, you should be involved With your diabetes, and you should understand what's going on, because you need to know for the future, but at the same time, 12 years old, and you could use a hand, right? Yeah, that's pretty much what we're talking about here. So, and it's fun to tease your mom about being old, you know, or whatever. I had fun with that too, or, you know, like the sofa or whatever, you know, but I'm sure she's pretty involved in your life, and you're just looking for this very specific thing from her. So is it fair to say that if for the next month, it became your mom's job to remind you 15 minutes before meals? Yeah, that it was 15 minutes before meals that maybe you could build up a little bit of a memory for that yourself. You think that's reasonable?

Unknown Speaker 29:07
Oh, yeah, yeah, I think that'd be great. And then

Scott Benner 29:10
what about while you're at school? Maybe a text message, yeah, right. This is how I used to do it with my daughter, like I had an alarm set on my phone while she was at school for whenever she had meals, or even, like, gym class or anything that needed, like an adjustment with with insulin, and my alarm would go off, and I'd stop, and I'd send her a text and I'd say, hey, you know, like, it's time to Pre Bolus for lunch. And you know, we would talk about it back and forth, and text for a second, and she'd get her Bolus in for lunch, and that would stop her from getting high at lunch, which was awesome. Or sometimes it would go off, and I would get like, a note, like, hey, like, her gym class is in a half an hour. And I'd say, Arden, let's set like, a Temp Basal decrease so that you don't get low at gym, like that kind of stuff. I

Speaker 1 29:58
have a nurse at my school that I go to for. My lunch, you do? So, yeah,

Scott Benner 30:02
okay, and is that an actual pre bullish, or does she bullish? You and you just go right to the food.

Speaker 1 30:07
It's a Bolus, or it's a Pre Bolus. I go 10 minutes early. Okay,

Scott Benner 30:12
good, good, good. So you, what do you? So what do you really need your mom? You need your mom in the morning and at dinner time, right? Yeah, yeah. And then if you're gonna have a snack, like now, listen, if, if we put her in charge, and you stand up at seven o'clock at night to go to the snack drawer, right, get a pretzel or something like that, and she says, You don't forget to bullish. You can't be mad at her because you asked her to remind you. Yes. All right, so you got to be fair to her too while you're doing it, 100% all right. Does it sound like a plan? Yep. Awesome. You think it'll work? Yeah, good. I'm excited. So now, if you're excited and I'm excited and she's excited, then together, I think we got a plan we do. Do you think I could talk to her for a minute here at the end and go over the plan with her so she knows? Yep, all right. Kyler, will you send me an email in a month and tell me how it's going? Uh, yeah, 100% I'll send you that email. I really appreciate it, man. Good luck at baseball. Have fun. Keep keep having fun while you're playing. It's a great sport. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Hand the phone to your mama. Good to talk. All right, see you. Yep. Hello. Hey. How are you? Hi, good. How are you? I'm good. So we came up with a plan. Okay, all right, I know you didn't expect to be on but do you want to introduce yourself real quick, or now that you're the old couch lady, would you prefer not to?

Speaker 2 31:31
Just to clarify, my name is Mary. I'm Tyler's mom, and I I'm actually a teacher, so I do not sit on the couch all day.

Scott Benner 31:41
You're not 65 and on the sofa constantly.

Speaker 3 31:43
No, no, I'm teaching. I

Scott Benner 31:47
think he was being sarcastic at points. He was very funny.

Speaker 2 31:49
Yes, he is a little sarcastic. I apologize for that. Don't apologize. It

Scott Benner 31:54
was awesome. So what we talked about was, and I know you were hearing one side of it, but it sounds like so just between you and I and everyone listening, and Kyler, if he ever listens to this too, what I'm hearing is, is that he needs help, yes, and he wishes it would come from you. Yeah, that's what I'm getting. So he doesn't think you're not involved, but he thinks his dad's more involved with diabetes. And what I heard was, and listen, I could be 100% wrong, but I've spoken to a lot of people, what I heard was, he's just 12 years old, and this is a lot, and yeah, he should remember to Bolus his meals, but he's not, and he needs somebody to help him. So I said, Well, your mom wants you to make this, you know, this change to make these and I explained to him why, like, all the health reasons why, and that you're worried about him later when he goes away to college or gets a job or something like that. You know that it's about health and his safety and happiness and all that stuff. Like, I stuck up for all the old couch ladies out there and but at the same time, like, he also has a deeper voice, and he's got a little bravado about him, and I could see how you could read him as older than he is, maybe, and then you give him the diabetes, and he's had it for so long, and it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to Pre Bolus, but Mary, I've talked to a lot of people with type one, and they all describe that remembering to Bolus for their meals is really difficult that you just get caught up living and you don't think about it. So what we said was, is that he could commit to doing it, if you could commit to reminding him, I think he's looking for you 15 minutes before a meal, to tell him, Hey, we're getting ready to have breakfast. We're getting ready to have dinner. It's time to Bolus to be a little involved in that for a month, like so like, for the next 30 days, if you guys do it together, to see if it builds a little more of a of a rhythm between the two of you and helps them. And then he said he'd send me an email in a month and tell me how it was going awesome. I love that, all right. I would say too that during school times like, you know, I it sounds like he goes to the school nurse, so you probably don't need it there. But I did tell him, I'm like, Look, if you stand up at seven o'clock at night and go, like, you know, to the pretzel drawer to get a pretzel or something like that, if your mom yells across the room at you from the sofa, like you got a Bolus for that, I was like, you can't be mad at her because you asked her to remind you. Yeah, that's the that's the key. No, I know. Don't worry. I got kids anyway. Listen, if this works, Mary, no, I'm gonna sell this. I'm gonna put it in a bottle and sell it. All right, all right. And if it doesn't work, I'm not gonna be super surprised. But if it does work, like, maybe he just needed someone who wasn't you to, like, propose an idea, because then he can accept it. Because I'm nobody to him, right? Like, I'm just a voice, and at the same time, like I tried to give him, he's a very, uh, like, thoughtful kid he talked about. Boy Scouts a little bit and being told to, like, step in and help people. And, you know, it sounds like he's, like, you know, got a real, like, emotional side to him, but comes off kind of like, you know, like, maybe he's got a big personality at the same time. Uh huh. I just think Mary's Not My Kid. But it sounds to me like you should just remember that he's 12. Yeah, you know, yep, that's pretty much this. Of course it is. No I understand, but that's what I got out of this.

Speaker 2 35:29
All right. Well, we appreciate it. We will definitely give it a try and let you know. Thank you.

Scott Benner 35:35
Do you think this was an I don't understand, or a Scott life coach? I think it was definitely a life coach. I do too. I'm gonna make sure I put it into this category. Yeah, I like it. I think I might have a thing going here with this. Yeah.

Speaker 2 35:48
I agree, yeah. All right, it was very helpful

Scott Benner 35:54
around Mary. Are you being serious? No, you should be a life coach as well. Well, I don't have time for that, but I this podcast thing ever goes, I was gonna say tits up. Is that a saying? Everyone knows? I think so. Yeah, if that ever happens, I'll pivot to this. There you go. There you go. I really appreciate you doing this. I appreciate you bringing them on. It was very, very nice of you to set up. I'd like to ask you, like, in a month, would you reach out and tell me how it went? Because I could add in your email to the end of the episode. Yeah, absolutely awesome. What do you teach? I teach fifth grade math. Oh my gosh, God bless you. Yeah. Is that why he told me he doesn't like math?

Speaker 2 36:37
He really doesn't like math, which is very hard for me, I was gonna

Scott Benner 36:40
say, is he just digging at you, or does he not like math? No, he

Speaker 2 36:44
really does not like math. He never has, so it's been that's hard on me. Hey,

Scott Benner 36:49
at least he reads. That's awesome. Yes, he does enjoy your reading. So there's that that's good, by the way, the reading thing might Evan flow a little bit and come back. But my son was a big reader when he was younger, and got back to it in his 20s. Yeah,

Speaker 2 37:02
he's not. He doesn't do it outside of school, but at school he does enjoy it. So I'll take

Scott Benner 37:07
it hopefully eventually it will do you think he'll keep playing baseball. Hopefully

Speaker 2 37:11
we'll see his team's going to Cooperstown this summer. So that's pretty exciting. Yeah,

Scott Benner 37:16
they'll have a great time. They have those little replica fields to play on. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, so yeah. Then next year, the fields get bigger. Oh, great. They go to the 5070, field. So now instead of 46 what is it? 4660 right? So it's 60 feet the first base, 46 feet to home plate, yeah. And then it goes to 5070, so 50 from the pitcher's mound to home, 70 feet to first. But the 5070 fields are usually on full size outfields, so 5070 is the first time you figure out if they can play baseball or not. Oh gosh. Well, we'll see if he's still rolling and doing well there, then you're stuck. He's gonna end up playing high school. So okay, yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens. Get your sunscreen and your floppy hat ready. Mary, yeah. All right, thank you so much for that. All right, thank you. Have a great day.

Unknown Speaker 38:06
Thanks. Bye.

Scott Benner 38:15
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 tubulin pumps, this link is for you. Omnipod.com/juice box. Dexcom sponsored this episode of the juice box podcast. Learn more about the Dexcom g7 at my link. Dexcom.com/juicebox, earlier you heard me talking about blue circle health, the free virtual type one diabetes care, education and support program for adults. And I know it sounds too good to be true, but I swear it's real. Thanks to funding from a big T 1d philanthropy group, blue circle health doesn't bill your insurance or charge you a cent. In other words, it's free. They can help you with things like carb counting, insurance navigation, diabetes technology, insulin adjustments, peer support, Prescription Assistance and much more. So if you're tired of waiting nine months to get in with your endo or your educator, you can get an appointment with their team within one to two weeks. This program is showing what T 1d care can and should look like. Blue circle health is currently available in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. If you live in one of those states, go to blue circle health.org to sign up today. The link is in the show notes, and please help me to spread the word blue circle health had to buy an ad because people don't believe that it's free, but it is. They're trying to give you free care if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. It's ready to go right now. And like I said, they're adding states so quickly in 2025 that you want to follow them on social media. Blue circle health and you can also keep two. Attacking blue circle health.org to see when your free care is available to you. 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. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast. Private, Facebook group Juicebox Podcast, type one diabetes. But everybody is welcome. Type one type two gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes on Facebook. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com, you.

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#1435: Small Sips: All Carbs Aren't Created Equal

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Carb counting isn’t just about numbers—it’s about understanding how different carbs affect blood sugar differently.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, welcome to the sips series.

These foundational strategies were nominated by listeners. They told me, these are the ideas in the podcast that truly made a difference for them. So I distilled them down into short, actionable insights. There's not going to be any fluff or complex jargon, just practical, real world diabetes management that you can start applying today. And I know your time is valuable, so we're keeping these short. Another small sip will come out once a week for the foreseeable future. If you like what you hear, check out the Pro Tip series or the bold beginning series for more. Those series are available in the menu at Juicebox podcast.com and you can find complete lists of all of the series in the featured tab on the private Facebook group. Please remember 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. The questions you have, I guarantee you there's answers to them in the Juicebox Podcast, and it's all free. You Jen,

Jenny, broccoli, mashed potatoes, white bread, rice,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:35
lollipop. I like broccoli in there. They're

Scott Benner 1:37
all food, right? They're things people put in their mouth, they

Speaker 1 1:41
are all food. I like the fact that they are technically all food, yeah. Now,

Scott Benner 1:46
if we took 10 carbs of broccoli, 10 carbs of mashed potatoes, 10 carbs of brown rice, 10 carbs of basmati rice, 10 carbs of all giant lollip, how much? How big would a lollipop have to be to be 10 carbs? Probably not that big, right? Well, yeah, no, your

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:02
typical lollipops, like the little round, circular ones that are like a quarter size, are usually five to eight grams a piece, depending so, you know,

Scott Benner 2:10
I'm old enough to think of that as a doctor's office lollipop. It is. Yeah, I don't think they give this away. Lollipops

Speaker 1 2:16
that had the curved bottom, they had the two sticks that were a curve. Do you remember

Scott Benner 2:21
those so excited? She's so excited. She's like, I love that lollipop. I have to tell you. I went into a place the other day to order something, some food, and it wasn't gonna be ready for a half an hour. And I said, I'm gonna go wait in my car. You know, it's that time of year. I'm like, hey, these people are sick. I know they are. I gotta get out of here. And they had a, like, a bowl of lollipops. And I was like, I'm just gonna take one of those. I just I rolled outside, sat in my car with my lollipop. But I bring these things up because if we took 10 carbs, 30 carbs, and made equal piles, carb wise, of all these different foods, it doesn't mean that those carbs are all going to impact your blood sugar the same way. It doesn't mean that they're going to require, and they think this is the part that throws people off the same amount of insulin. So 10, you know what I mean? I want to talk about that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:08
Yeah, no, I think it's valuable to bring up, because I think in the world we live in now, with the technology we have, we can actually see more of what you're saying. We can see that 10 grams of broccoli versus 10 grams of mashed potatoes, let's say are all worth they're all worth the same amount of insulin. But because we have the quality of technology in delivering that insulin, we have a better way to push that insulin out, to cover the food. And we also know a lot of people, thankfully now know a lot more about Pre Bolus thing for certain things versus not other things. So that the understanding of how insulin works and then how food digests, they're really they're the two factors that are so very important, and a carb is a carb as a carb is not true when you're trying to deliver insulin to match the effect that that CARB is going to have once it hits your

Scott Benner 4:13
bloodstream, right? I have to tell you that we did a defining diabetes episode called carb absorption and digestion. It's 668, was a long time. It was a very long time ago, and I understood by then, through my experience with Arden, that all carbs weren't created equally. Like, that's how I thought about it, and it's how it comes out in the podcast. It wasn't until one day, I think, in one of the pro tip episodes, where you started talking about the digestion. And I have to admit, like, I don't know if I ever told you this at the time, but I was like, oh, that's why. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I was like, I knew it was happening. I saw it happening. I knew how to combat it, like, the whole thing, I didn't know why it was happening. And I found that's been such a almost set a delightful path, because I think it. Really opened up the podcast a lot, because it's led to so many other things, like, great, like, you know, initially, just the conversation of, like, Look, if you put those potatoes in there, the makeup of those is going to, you know, kind of dictate how it gets digested, how long it stays in your system, how long it's impacting but if you like, go flop a little sour cream, you know, or some butter on top of it. Butter is a great example, because no carbs and butter. So you know, if your mashed potatoes are really just a butter delivery system, and it slows down your digestion, well, then those potatoes, they sit in your stomach longer, they impact longer. And that's what I mean by it like, yes, it's 10 carbs of potatoes, but the impact over the timeline of digestion, the life of the insulin, all the things that are going on at the same time are not going to all be equal. You can't just push the button put in the insulin, wait however long you're going to wait, eat the mashed potatoes, have the experience, and then do that again with broccoli and have the experience. I think that's why people with diabetes so often say things like, I did the same thing today that I did yesterday, and it didn't work out the same, except you didn't do the same thing. You just aren't seeing the variables that make yesterday different from today

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:19
correct, sometimes Absolutely. And when we talk about there are, you know, working with as many little kids as I have the opportunity to, there are a lot of little kids and even adults, but who have likes, and they stick with those likes for an amount of time before they decide, well, I just don't like that anymore. I'm not going to eat it. But that makes it a little bit easier to determine the impact, and then you have to take into consideration the variables around that. So you may have figured out your grilled chicken with steamed broccoli, and you have it every single day for dinner because that's your favorite thing to eat, but the variable surrounding entry into that meal time, or even after that meal time, can then make a shift in how the insulin gets in in a timely manner versus a more lengthy manner, versus, you know what I mean, like exercise you're doing volleyball for three hours ahead of that meal, versus the next day you've had three tests, and you come into dinner time and you've had no activity, because if you've just been sitting, there are those variables that are going to impact this meal needs two units in a given scenario, but the variables surrounding that are going to change day to day.

Scott Benner 7:39
I have probably 1000 times said to people, if you're really struggling to figure out how your insulin works, get boring for a few days and eat the same thing for breakfast, the same thing for lunch, the same thing for dinner. You'll get better at it, like, because right then, at least you can see like, oh, I tried a 10 minute Pre Bolus. This didn't work. You know, like, there's nothing worse than somebody being so bum fuzzle that they start saying things like, I saw someone lying the other day. Said, This is what's making me think of it. She said, I don't understand. I'm up to a one hour Pre Bolus. And I was like, Oh, well, that's not your problem. Then right? Like, your basal is wrong, or you're, you know, the meal before isn't being addressed correctly, or any number of problems. But like, if you're up to, like, trying to Pre Bolus your meal for an hour, you're looking at the wrong problem, you know. And I just think that if you simplify, you can see how like this food works, and then you can see, well, now I can figure out like this food mixed with this food on a plate might work differently again, and that's a little easier for me. I'm a very boring person. You and I are going to get done here. I'm going to go downstairs. I'm going to take two I'm going to take two eggs, I'm going to take a little bit of protein, I'm going to put it in a pan with like, half a tablespoon of butter, I'm going to fry it up on a throat and a wrap, and I'm going to eat it like I do every morning. I don't care. Doesn't bother me. But do that for a few days, you'll start seeing consistencies. Start realizing, hey, my Pre Bolus was a little short. It was a little long. This carb ratio doesn't work for this meal, but it does work for lunch for some reason, like, who cares? Why learn that you know, right? Expect that what's going to happen is going to happen, and do it again the next day. Have some success. And then, like you said, now you've got actionable tools that you know how to use. Start applying them to different scenarios, right? And

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:22
then you can take that even further. Let's say you love your protein wrap that you're eating, and you decide, well, goodness, you know, I'd really like to get some good antioxidant quality into this meal as well. I'm going to start throwing some blueberries or some raspberries into this right? Well, that's an addition to what you had figured out. So now, if things go sideways and you didn't expect them, it's okay. I added this extra. How do I need to compensate for this? It's an do I add a secondary Bolus at a different time? Do I Bolus a little bit longer Pre Bolus? Do. So what do I do? Right? So you can take your again foundation of things that you do most of the time, and most people have about 80% of the same foods over and over and over again in a week's time. You can figure those out. You can start throwing in the oddities and figure it out in an easier way. Yeah,

Scott Benner 10:21
I mean, listen, I don't have diabetes, but that wrap can sometimes have I'll tell you what I'll do. Sometimes I smoke sausage and I put it in the refrigerator and I put it with my wrap. Sometimes I do chicken, sometimes I do shrimp, sometimes I do beef. Sometimes I'll get crazy and put bacon in there. I'm crazy. Just losing weight for the last two years has been a lot of fun, but the bacon, if I was using insulin, would slow down digestion differently than the chicken, or the chicken would digest 45 minutes later, an hour later, versus maybe the beef would do it a different time. Or the shrimp might not really impact me very much. It's all there. But like you said, you throw, not that you're putting a berry in with shrimp, but all of a sudden you like, throw some berries into it. You could, I guess. But now, all of a sudden, you might get hit with some fast acting carbs, because that wrap, prior to that is eggs. It's a protein in the wrap. I try to use a fairly low carb wrap. That's probably a slow, consistent impact. All of a sudden, I have a little bowl of blueberries on the side. Now I'm gonna get a zing of, you know, fast acting sugar, it changes Pre Bolus time. It changes the amount of insulin. You know, yeah, all of a sudden now, if I was getting a 50 point rise out of the wrap that I was getting rid of in two hours, that fast acting sugar could throw that 50 point rise another 50, 100 points higher if I don't hit it correctly, one way or the other. What I can tell you is that people report back that the phrase not all carbs are created equal really help them understand diabetes episode 668, 739, and 1068, are some places you can hear that discussed. Awesome. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 11:54
Thank you.

Scott Benner 12:02
If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The bold beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginnings 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. 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, if 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 Hey everybody. I know there's so many episodes you might be like, I don't know where anything is, but if you go to Juicebox podcast.com or go to the private Facebook group and look in the feature tab, you'll see a complete list of all the series that exists within the podcast. And I'm talking about after dark ask Scott and Jenny algorithm, pumping bold beginnings, defining diabetes, defining thyroid, diabetes, pro tip, diabetes, variables, mental wellness, type two diabetes, how we eat, and if we add something else, like, say, my weight loss diaries, which we did, you'll find them there as well. And as a matter of fact, we're about to add a new list right now about GLP medications, because we have a seriously nice grouping of episodes on that topic. This is a good way for you to keep up with what's going on on the Juicebox Podcast, and even a better way to find those series that are, you know, compendiums at this point, 1020, episodes that are all on the same topic. So.

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The Juicebox Podcast is a free show, but if you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a gift here. Recent donations were used to pay for podcast hosting fees. Thank you to all who have sent 5, 10 and 20 dollars!

Donate