#1486 Look to the Western Skies

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

Grace recounts her raw diabetes journey, mending family bonds, pursuing education, and an unforgettable Wicked theater encounter.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

---

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

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

Grace is 24 years old. She's had type one diabetes for about a year and a half. Grace is a nurse. It's pretty cool. She wants to be a diabetes educator. We also talk about my experience in a movie theater seeing wicked and people who were rude. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink a G, one.com/juice. Box. To get this offer, don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com. Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is and a US resident? If you are, I'd love it if you would go to T 1d, exchange.org/juice, box. And take the survey. When you complete that survey, your answers are used to move type one diabetes research of all kinds. So if you'd like to help with type one research, but don't have time to go to a doctor or an investigation and you want to do something right there from your sofa, this is the way t 1d exchange.org/juice box. It should not take you more than about 10 minutes. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the twist A I D system powered by tide pool that features the twist loop algorithm, which you can target to a glucose level as low as 87 Learn more at twist.com/juice, box. That's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box, get precision insulin delivery with a target range that you choose at twist.com/juice, box, that's t, w, I, I S, t.com/juice. Box. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. This is the meter that my daughter has on her person right now. It is incredibly accurate and waiting for you at contour next.com/juice box. This episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by us Med, us. Med.com/juice, box, or call, 888-721-1514, get your supplies the same way we do from us. Med, my

Grace 2:51
name is Grace. I'm 24 years old. I was diagnosed with type one diabetes at 23 so about a year and a half ago, I'm a nurse. I've already had multiple nursing jobs, and I experienced all my symptoms when I was in orientation of my first nursing job. And now I've moved to a different state. I live on my own, and all of that is because of diabetes. And now at this point in my career, I want to become a diabetes educator, also working towards that

Scott Benner 3:24
grace, we're going to ask you a bunch of questions. Now, sounds good. So you were diagnosed about a year and a half ago, and you were, like, in nursing school. You had just gotten out of school. Like, where were you in that phase? It was

Grace 3:37
interesting. So I had just graduated from nursing school, like six months ago. But when I think back about my symptoms and everything, it all started the month that I graduated from school, so it was like, graduated from college, immediately, something's not right. I'm sorry this is

Scott Benner 3:54
gonna feel like I'm jumping around a little bit. But how have you had multiple nursing jobs already? So

Grace 3:58
yeah, this is an interesting story. So that first job where I was diagnosed and experiencing all my symptoms and everything, I ended up getting laid off, and I had not even finished my orientation yet because I was just not mentally in a place to be able to go to a hospital and take care of other people. You're a nurse, you need to be basically perfect in order to care for other people, because there's lives at stake. And I was making little mistakes and stuff like that, which, yeah, I understand, but I was in the very beginning of everything. You were making

Scott Benner 4:32
mistakes because you were new or do you think you were making mistakes because you had undiagnosed type one diabetes?

Grace 4:38
I think it was because I had undiagnosed type one diabetes. My brain fog was insane. I needed water every five seconds. I was not able to think clearly and process what I needed to do for my job, and I they just couldn't give me the time that I needed to be able to, you know, get more experience and recover a little bit more. But, yeah, I. Ended up getting laid off.

Scott Benner 5:01
Do you understand their position looking back, I do,

Grace 5:04
but then I look at the job that I have now, and they're so supportive, and they were able to accommodate me in everywhere that every single way that I've needed grace. I'm

Scott Benner 5:15
gonna ask like, in fairness, the people now know you have diabetes back then, yes, they just thought you were probably day drinking. No,

Grace 5:21
I was diagnosed, given three weeks to recover, and then I came back to work.

Scott Benner 5:27
I see, I see, yeah, okay, I'm sorry. Like, I thought they didn't realize. I thought it was before you knew you had diabetes. So you're newly diagnosed, not doing well, got the brain fog, and they just pull you into a room one day and go, Hey, look, you're not cutting it. We're gonna let you off. Yeah. Oh, basically, your first job out of college, yeah. Did you think you were doing a good job? Or what was that time like for you?

Grace 5:50
I thought under the circumstances, I was doing fine. I thought that based on everything, if I just had a little bit more time to kind of get mentally better, then I would have been okay. I could have done that job.

Scott Benner 6:05
Were your blood sugars balancing at that point? Were they did you just not know what you were doing? Like, do you know what you're doing now, I

Grace 6:11
do know what I'm doing now, at that time, it was literally the first month or two of diagnosis, I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah.

Scott Benner 6:19
So what were you seeing? A lot of like, vacillating up and down and, yeah, getting low and eating and getting high. That was all happening.

Grace 6:26
That was all happening as a roller coaster all the time. Gotcha, yeah. All

Scott Benner 6:30
right. So how long did it take you, like, did you go home and say to yourself, like, I gotta figure out diabetes? Or just say, I gotta find another job? Well, once

Grace 6:38
that happened, I decided to take a good amount of time just to figure out diabetes. Yeah, I lived with my parents. I had the time to be able to sit and reflect and figure out what I wanted to do next. And I always knew from probably before college that I wanted to move to a different state and live on my own. I decided that, you know, after good, like, five months of figuring out diabetes, that I was in the space to be able to go out on my own, and I ended up finding another job. Now I'm a oncology nurse, wow, yeah, and I love it, and I live on my own, and yeah, so I used that time to figure out diabetes. And then towards the end, I got laid off in January, and it was around April where I was like, okay, you know, I need to figure out what's next. And then I did that. And then by June, I was working at at my new hospital

Scott Benner 7:36
where you are now. Can you tell me what was the like? Were you always like hot to move out of your parents house, or did that come after the diabetes?

Grace 7:44
So I love being home, and I love my family. I have a great family. I like being home, but I just knew that my personality, I wanted to move out, and that was just further. It was made a little bit more urgent by the diabetes diagnosis, because being at home kind of reminded me of everything that happened and the thought of going back to work and living at my parents house, I hated it so much, and I just wanted to be able to to go out on my own.

Scott Benner 8:13
Oh, that's interesting. I mean, listen, I'm not saying, like, you should have lived at home forever. I was just wondering, like, if it was I just want to move out, because it's my age and my age and my time, and I'm working and I want to do that. Or if you just felt like you were running from something, like, because you got diagnosed, or like, you know, I was just trying to figure out, like, yeah, yeah, where all that came from. But you're saying just time to fly, that's all,

Grace 8:33
yeah, exactly, yeah. It just kind of pushed me to, you know, do what I want, when other people

Scott Benner 8:40
Yeah, Grace. You know, if you're flying solo, you're flying free. I saw wicked this week. Oh yeah, me too. The amount of people that I've said to, if you're looking for me, look to the western sky in the last couple of days is, is it's upsetting and it's embarrassing a little bit. But I texted the people I say it going through my living room. Where are you going? I was like, if you if you can't find me, look to the western sky. What? What's happening anyway? Did you see it on you didn't see it on stage? You're too young, right? My

Grace 9:08
mom and my grandma and I saw it in like, our hometown theater a couple times when I was younger, and then I seen it in the movie twice. I saw it with my best friend, and then I saw it with my mom. Oh, awesome. It was so good.

Scott Benner 9:20
Oh yeah, I listen. I'm just gonna come out and tell you I love I liked it. I thought it was really good. I was like, Oh, I can't wait for the second half. Now also, I was pissed. Broke into two halves. But whatever, that's okay.

Grace 9:29
I know. No, I didn't realize how much backstory there is and how the Wizard of Oz is just like I saw this on, I think it was on Tik Tok, but it was like, The Wizard of Oz is the propaganda version of what you think happened, and then the wicked version is like the documentary. I was like, that's so cool, because there's a whole, I don't know there's a whole backstory behind it. Makes it more interesting. Grace.

Scott Benner 9:52
Let me fry your mind. What if it's backwards? What if the wicked the propaganda? And you know what I mean, who would know? Yeah, you don't know.

Grace 9:59
No, no, that's insane. I didn't think of it like that. That's

Scott Benner 10:03
why it's so much fun to talk about politics, because somebody's lying to you. But is it both of them? Oh, no. What do we do? You're

Grace 10:10
onto something, Scott, you're onto something. I understand the world. Grace,

Scott Benner 10:13
it's ridiculous. Do you want to tell me a little bit about your management? So you've been doing it for a year and a almost at an hour and a half, a year and a half, what did you start with? What do you have? Now, I'd like to know what technology you have or don't have. You've probably heard me talk about us Med and how simple it is to reorder with us med using their email system. But did you know that if you don't see the email and you're set up for this, you have to set it up. They don't just randomly call you, but I'm set up to be called if I don't respond to the email, because I don't trust myself 100% so one time I didn't respond to the email, and the phone rings the house. It's like, ring. You know how it works. And I picked it up. I was like, hello, and it was just the recording was like, US med doesn't actually sound like that, but you know what I'm saying. It said, Hey, you're I don't remember exactly what it says, but it's basically like, Hey, your order's ready. You want us to send it? Push this button if you want us to send it, or if you'd like to wait. I think it lets you put it off, like, a couple of weeks, or push this button for that. That's pretty much it. I push the button to send it, and a few days later, box right at my door. That's it. Us, med.com/juice, box. Or call 888-721-1514, get your free benefits checked now and get started with us. Med, Dexcom, Omnipod, tandem freestyle, they've got all your favorites, even that new eyelet pump. Check them out now at us. Med.com/juice, box, or by calling 8887211, 887211514, there are links in the show notes of your podcast player and links at Juicebox podcast.com to us Med and to all of the sponsors. The brand new twist insulin pump offers peace of mind with unmatched personalization and allows you to target a glucose level as low as 87 there are more reasons why you might be interested in checking out twist. But just in case, that one got you twist.com/juicebox, that's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box, you can target glucose levels between 87 and 180 it's completely up to you. In addition to precision insulin delivery that's made possible by twist design. Twist also offers you the ability to edit your carb entries even after you've Bolus. This gives the twist loop algorithm the best information to make its decisions with, and the twist loop algorithm lives on the pump so you don't have to stay next to your phone for it to do its job. Twist is coming very soon. So if you'd like to learn more or get on the wait list, go to twist.com/juice. Box. That's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box. Links in the show notes, links at Juicebox podcast.com. The contour, next gen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and it's entirely possible that it is less expensive in cash than you're paying right now for your meter through your insurance company. That's right. If you go to my link, contour next.com/juice box, you're going to find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, Rite, aid, Kroger and Meyer, you could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips in meter than you would pay through my link for the contour next gen and contour next test strips in cash. What am I saying? My link may be cheaper out of your pocket than you're paying right now, even with your insurance, and I don't know what meter you have right now, I can't say that, but what I can say for sure is that the contour next gen meter is accurate. It is reliable, and it is the meter that we've been using for years. Contour next.com/juice box. And if you already have a contour meter and you're buying test strips doing so through the Juicebox Podcast link will help to support the show.

Grace 14:06
So in the very beginning, the doctors that managed me at first, they said, Oh, you're a nurse, you know. So you know how to give the vial and syringe shots to your patients, so you can do it to yourself. So I have no idea why they started me on that, because I know now that people in my situation, at least should start with a pen, but I had those vials and syringes for two months, I think, no kidding. And then, okay, yeah, I know. And then I went to my primary, I was like, Can I just get an insulin pen and make this a lot easier? And they were like, yeah, no problem. So I did that for another six months, I'd say, and I was very well controlled. I just went low kind of a lot. And I didn't figure that out until I listened to the podcast, and I was like, Oh, my, my basal is definitely way too high based on the amount of activity that I do and stuff like that. And then after that, that was a little bit better. And then I finally got and then. Slim pump in July, I'm on the Omnipod now. Some

Scott Benner 15:02
good for you. You had to figure out that there were pens and then go ask somebody for one. Yeah. Okay, yeah, I did. I was gonna say, how do you rate, like, give a Yelp review to your endocrinology team. Like, do you think that if you didn't come to them and ask for a pen, you'd still be doing just injections from a vial.

Grace 15:21
Well, it's interesting, because it was the hospital that I was working at at the time that I went to for when I first got diagnosed, and it was the doctors there that gave me the vials and the syringes, sure. And then it was, it was my primary. That was like, that, I knew there was pens, so then I just, I just had to ask them, and then they were like, yeah, no problem. But it was my endocrinology team. I didn't get into her until a couple months after, when I was on on the pens.

Scott Benner 15:49
So, so from the hospital to endocrinology took so it took so long that you kind of, like, took a detour and just asked your GP about it. Exactly I see, how did it take so long? Like, so you're saying you called an endocrinology office said, Hey, I've been diagnosed with type one diabetes, and they said, we will see you 77 Tuesdays from now. Is it like? How long? Like, what was the gap of time? I think

Grace 16:13
it ended up being like, two months ish, because one of the doctors that I worked with at that hospital, he was able to get me in to one in Boston just to be able to be seen. So I went there, but then that doctor was like, well, you need to go closer to home. You know, this is an hour and a half two hours away from you. That's not realistic. Then I ended up having to go to one half an hour from my house, okay, which is a lot better, but the waiting list was,

Scott Benner 16:38
I gotcha pretty long, and you find them to be valuable. Now that you're there, well,

Grace 16:42
now that I'm there, I don't know. I feel like I have a really good handle on everything between listening to your podcast, what I knew, you know, kind of baseline from school, which wasn't a lot, but and what I see, I'm exposed to other people who have it daily, and I can kind of like, just make adjustments based on what I do, right? I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I go and she just, you know, kind of goes over my numbers from the last week, when, you know that doesn't reflect everything, and then maybe suggest a thing or two here. But I'm like, Yeah, I kind of know, but I don't know. I don't know. It's nice. It's nice to go still. So

Scott Benner 17:20
you have, you have, you said, a little bit of a background from nursing school. But what do you really like? What do they really teach you in nursing school?

Grace 17:25
In nursing school, they cover basically, like the general, you know, okay, so if somebody has diabetes, that means they can't make insulin because their pancreas isn't functioning anymore. So then when they're in the hospital, you need to give them insulin, but this is like a sliding scale, stuff like that. It's just the basics. And I remember in nursing school thinking like, this is so complicated, and these poor suckers who cannot, who have to deal with this and think about this all the time like that, must suck. Now you're a poor sucker, guys. I know. I know I'm a sucker.

Scott Benner 18:03
Do you have any other auto immune personally,

Grace 18:06
no. Nobody in my family has had any auto immune disorders, except for my cousin, who's the same age as me, she has celiac, and she was diagnosed in sophomore year of college, so a couple of years before my diagnosis, but that's the only autoimmune

Scott Benner 18:22
disease that you know of, okay? That came out of nowhere for you, as far as you're concerned, came out of left field, yeah, what was that time like? Like, how did you notice? I mean, how did it come on? How quickly did you get to a hospital? How'd you figure it out? So

Grace 18:35
it took me longer than it should have to get to a hospital. I started feeling my symptoms in like, May or June. I was studying for my NCLEX. I noticed I was losing a little bit of weight, and I also was just very, very, very anxious all the time, yeah, more than usual. So then I I took, I took my test. I was like, okay, things will be better now. I put on my scrubs to go to work for the first time in August, they fit me perfectly. In May, they were absolutely hanging off with me. I remember telling my mom, I was like, I need new scrubs, like these. I've lost a lot of weight. She's like, No, you know, you've just been stressed out and anxious. You haven't been eating as much. It's fine, you know, it'll go back to normal. I started working so tired. I was so so so tired throughout the day, probably because I was getting up two or three times a night to go to the bathroom. And then during the day, when I was working, I couldn't go more than a couple minutes without having a drink of water. Yeah, I would bring my 40 ounce Stanley water bottle and a couple of extra, like, just regular pull and spring bottles, and I still I would run out of water by the end of the day. Oh,

Scott Benner 19:43
give me a second here. I have two thoughts. Yeah. First of all, this is gonna sound like a sidebar, but this is from my wicked experience. Oh, yeah, because you just said you had your Stanley water bottle, which is metal. Yes, this is like a PSA, a public service announcement to people who might not know. Let me just get a little farther from the microphone so I don't hurt anybody's ears. Do not bring your metal water bottles to the movie theater. You fucking idiots like, what in that? I mean, my God, I'm like this girl in front of me. Oh, if she can hear this, I hate you. Just please make sure. I don't know. She wouldn't know this was me, okay? But you know, the cup holder is plastic, right? She's got a metal cup with her. First of all, I understand. I don't want to pay $15 for a drink either, okay? But that's the world we live in. Don't drink while you're at the theater, or at least, like, sneak in something quiet. Here's what it sounded like, Grace. Listen closely.

Grace 20:36
Oh my god.

Scott Benner 20:38
This is her searching for the cup holder hole. Maybe look over and look where you're putting the cup and go slow like this. Watch, watch me put it down quietly. See it's down. You didn't even hear it happen. It wouldn't be that hard. She must have done that. I don't want to over exaggerate a million times during the movie. Okay, just, oh my god. I'm like, You think she'll find the hole soon? Nope, she's got it, excellent. Oh my Oh,

Grace 21:06
my God, that is so annoying. I'd be bad, too. Three

Scott Benner 21:10
of us. It costs $48 for three of us to go to goddamn movie. And what I heard was that, then Grace, I'm out myself here. Okay, then I swear to God, or whoever you're listening to, if you're listening whoever you think like swearing to would be the biggest thing. Okay, in the middle of the movie, she just turns the flashlight on, her phone on, and starts just like looking at the person next to her. And I don't know what they're looking for, this flashlight. I mean, you know now, Grace, yeah, these things. It's like a halogen bulb in your hand, right? Yeah, exactly. And it's not quick. She didn't turn on and go, Oh, there it is. That's what we're looking for. She just kept searching. She was spelunking. I think she was looking for gold. I don't know what was going on, but after Oh, Grace, now it didn't stop. And so I leaned forward, and I said, Can you please turn the light off? And she turns back to me and says something unpleasant, and it started with F and it ended with you. I don't know if you can guess what she said. Now we're in the dark. We're in the dark gray. I don't know who I'm talking to, okay, what I can tell you is I don't know who she is or the people she's with, because they came into the movie Seven minutes after it began, and then, oh, so they came in in the dark, and they're doing the head shuffle, because they can't just sit down, you know what I mean, like, and then, oh, here's the bag. These the Twizzlers. This is happening. I'm like, You have got to be fucking kidding me. But anyway, I don't know what she looks like. I can't gage her age. Is what I'm telling you, because they came in in the dark. So when she said to me, you, I said, now I'm an adult. Grace, you know, I'm in public. I'm an adult. You know how I handled it, right? I said, I said, you and then I but, I said, but I said, you turn off the light. Now. She shut the light off immediately. God bless okay. And then everyone in the theater. It was one of those theaters where everybody was a little chippy. You know what I mean? There's a little too much talking going on, a little too much. One guy, I wish I could properly explain to you how long it took him to open up his candy, but, but hold on a second. I gotta leave this. I'll be right back. Hold on. I'm back. So he's got to open up his candy, right? But he's trying to be quiet, so he's going slow. So it goes like this.

Grace 23:42
I Oh my God, just rip that. I would be like, Oh my

Scott Benner 23:47
God, just rip, just rip bag open. You're killing me. That's what I was thinking, right? This is just happening, like a band aid, like a band aid, just happening. It just, it won't stop. And very loud, very I'm not doing it justice right now. Okay, and it won't stop. And I start leaning forward, and I can Arden's hand comes over, and she puts her hand on my leg. And I was like, Okay, I must be acting like I'm gonna say something to the bag person. I wasn't gonna say anything to the bag person. I was just watching him. I was watching him as a grown adult. Not understand that a little bit of fast noise would have been better than a lot of really slow noise. So anyway, I know these people. I know COVID ruined movies and that we're trying to get it back, and that there's probably, like a half a generation of people who don't understand, but I don't know how much common sense it takes to realize that you're pissed about how much you spent to get here, so am I shut the fuck up.

Grace 24:44
I know you gotta make it a good experience for everybody involved. If there's that much money at stake, it just needs to go seamlessly based on the amount of money that you

Scott Benner 24:53
spend. Maybe I'm crazy, but making a bunch of noise, banging a metal cup around and shining a flashlight. Don't seem to be like difficult things not to do in a movie theater. No, no, no, no. Okay. Anyway, theater etiquette, well, so anyway, after you turn off the light, Everybody calm down. And I was like, Yeah, I fixed the theater. There

Grace 25:14
you go. Gotta scare them. That's the best way.

Scott Benner 25:18
Grace, I gotta tell you. I don't know where you grew up, but I'm older than you, obviously by a lot. What kept me from doing the wrong thing for a very long time in my young life was I was afraid someone was going to hit

Grace 25:30
me. There you go. Hey, I don't know that is, that is not how I grew up, but it works. I know it works.

Scott Benner 25:36
Grace is like I've seen it work on television. I've seen MMA. I know a lot of things Exactly.

Grace 25:41
Yep, I've seen it all.

Scott Benner 25:43
I don't think we should have to threaten people, but I do want to point out that she said, You first. And there's more I could say, but I don't think you should start yelling, f you in a in a dark theater, at a person gig. You don't know who I am, like, Do you know what I mean? Right?

Grace 25:58
That's very much jumping the gun. Usually you start off with a little, like, all right, no problem. Like, you just go from there, not an immediate you.

Scott Benner 26:09
What if I was like, I know, just heard the story. Now I hear it's possible. I don't sound rational to everybody, like, what if I was not a rational person? Or what if I was a violent person, like, I don't know. Like, you just don't start yelling, like, I don't know what's wrong with you guys out there. Now, okay, but like, you don't know who you're talking to. No.

Grace 26:26
That's why, whenever I drive I never have road rage, because I am so afraid that if I, like, look at somebody and flip them off and they're just gonna whip out a gun and shoot me. Grace, you're a smart person. That's exactly how it is. Yeah,

Scott Benner 26:38
did you see the, um, the court case that just ended between the YouTuber and the guy that shot him. I did not okay, so a young YouTuber who I don't know, I haven't seen one of his videos, okay, maybe he's out there trying to save the world. I couldn't possibly tell you, but he's running at this guy in public who doesn't know him, holding his phone up in his face and saying, crazy. And the guy kind of backs away from him. He tries to move away from the YouTuber. Keeps coming at him with his like, yuck, yuck. Look how fun this is style of being an asshole. And the guy pulls out what looks to me to be a 38 snub nose and shoots him, yeah, and I have to admit, and you can all judge me, if you want, I was like, Huh? I'm all right with that. And now he doesn't kill him, which was nice. I'm glad the guy's not dead for just being dumb and making a YouTube video. That's good. He gets shot. The thing goes to court, you know, because the guy shot him, and, you know, the jury found the guy with a gun not guilty of anything. Wow. And I'm going to tell you again, and you can all judge me one way, though, if you want. I thought good, and that was it. Yeah, I don't think you should be provoked.

Grace 27:41
He is provoked, and he tried at first to just back away. No, I get it. Like, I don't

Scott Benner 27:46
know, I think this is a generational thing. Is what I'm getting at here. I sound like an old person yelling to get off my lawn, but I'm just saying that, like, you can't just run up the people like you don't know who that guy is. You know what I mean, or what his problems are, or if he's got a gun in his pocket, very easy, by the way. It was just a gun in like, his like, sweatshirt pocket. I was like, who carries that gun in the sweatshirt pocket anyway? Not the point. All right, Grace. Let's get back to your diabetes. I'm sorry. Please be quiet in movies. For God's sakes. Just go in the fear.

Grace 28:14
There's movie etiquette,

Scott Benner 28:17
yeah, and look forward. And if you gotta sneeze, that's fine. I'm not an ogre. But if you're gonna sneeze 50 times, get up and leave the theater and go sneeze outside and then come back, yeah, it's not hard, yeah. And if

Grace 28:29
you want to talk to somebody, whisper, but actually whisper, people don't know how to whisper. I gotta

Scott Benner 28:33
tell you that. Can I do one more story from the theater? Yes. So it's me and Kelly and Arden in a movie, and in front of us, a woman and her Kids Next Door, the kids eight, nine years old. I don't know about that age. The boy is doing the like, bouncy thing with his chair, like, bounce, bounce, bounce. When they sit down, I go, okay, you know, he's little kid. He's excited. He's coming to the movie. It's fine. Bounce, bounce, bounce doesn't stop. The movie starts. Bouncing doesn't stop. Now I'm looking at the woman, and I'm like, you're like, you're gonna stop this, right? Like, because, I mean, he's next to her, going back and forth too. She's got to be out of her mind. You would think, yeah, movie starts. This does not stop. It is not stopping. Now, the kid is seated. His seat is kind of split between Kelly's and Arden's, so Kelly and Arden are basically sitting more in front of him. I'm to the left of him. I'm a good parent and a nice person, and I don't want my wife and my kids to deal with this through the whole movie. And I'm also like, Yes, I yelled, You with the other girl, but, like, it's a little kid. Like, you know what I mean? Like, what am I gonna do? Right? Yeah, right, exactly. So I scooch down. I scooch my butt forward in my seat, and I reach out and very slowly, with my right foot, I take control of his seat, and I stop him from bouncing. Now he's a little kid. He doesn't know what's happening to him, so I get him stopped, and I wait, and then I start taking my foot off of it, and I realize that if I take my pressure off of his seat, he starts to bounce. It's a kick. And I'm like, Oh my god. So I'm watching the entire movie strip my right leg stretched out with my foot on his seat. He doesn't know what's happening. I want to be clear his just like, once the seat won't bounce anymore, he just stops bouncing. And, like, a half an hour into it, Arden just leans over to me and she very quietly, she goes, Do you want me to take over for a while?

Grace 30:24
I know I was gonna say, that's a great leg workout for you. And

Scott Benner 30:26
I was like, Sure, to which it was, like, it was like, we were in a movie, like, in a capsule, like, like, switching apart out. But like, you know, you know when, uh, Indiana Jones had to take the the monkey skull, like, it was, like, that, right? And, like, so, yeah, so Arden slides her foot on and I'm like, you have to put a little bit of pressure, not too much. I'm whispering to her, if you push too much, he'll push forward. You don't want that. You just want to stop him from bouncing. And we traded back and forth a number of times during the theater to stop the kid from bouncing. And he never bounced once. So funny. The movie ended, so funny. We took our foot off his seat, and it just started again. He just started bouncing again.

Grace 31:01
It was awesome. Oh my god, anyway, and the mom was just clueless.

Scott Benner 31:05
Oh yeah, no, no. She never once parented that kid through anything that happened in that movie. Oh my god, Grace. If you were bouncing in your seat in the theater, do you think your mom would say something to you? My dad

Grace 31:18
definitely would. Yeah. What do you think he would say he would like, whisper to stop because I was being annoying. And annoying scare me. I'd be like, okay, yeah, exactly. Now, there's

Scott Benner 31:33
people right now. They're like, Oh, the kid probably had ADD he can't help it. Okay, God bless. Don't go to the movie. Exactly. Don't. Don't sit in front of me. But like, how do you not see, oh, god damn it. Do a more

Grace 31:44
energetic activity where you can do all that stuff. No, I understand. It's

Scott Benner 31:48
the day after Christmas. I'm already mad again.

Grace 31:53
So much for that.

Scott Benner 31:55
Okay, so I gotta find out how, like, a 23 year old finds a podcast about

Grace 32:00
diabetes, when I contacted you that was the most uncertain and like alone, that I felt I would say, and I was just reaching out for any kind of support, any other people who knew about what I was going through, right? I knew that there were other diabetes podcasts and, you know, out there, and I just found you on Spotify, and I sent some episodes to my mom. She listens to you too. Oh, hey mom, and yeah, that's pretty much it. I was just out really looking for support.

Scott Benner 32:33
Okay, so you're not necessarily looking for management ideas right away,

Grace 32:37
not right away. Okay, I look mostly to the stories, like interviews that you do, like this, I listen to those, and then I listen to a lot of the kind of mental health podcasts that you do. Like your resilience series with Erica. I loved that, and I sent fourth episode of the four parts to my mom, my dad and my best friend, just so they could understand a little bit like, why I felt so lonely. Because at that point too, that was right when I had moved out on my own, and it was like, okay, my job's new, all right, I go home, and I'm alone in my apartment, and my family's two hours away, and I just was so, you know, uncomfortable. So I've found a lot of solace in your listening to your podcast. Definitely,

Scott Benner 33:26
you just melted my heart. I forgot all about those shitty people the movie theater. I feel better now. Thank you. You've made my day. Glad I could do that. No, no, it's real. It's nice to know that. Like, you know, meet you sit here and you're like, I have an idea about this. And then you're like, can I harangue Erica into helping me? And I'm like, you know, do you want to do this with me? And she's like, Yeah. So we start doing it, and, you know, you put it all together, and it goes off to an editor, and it comes back, and it sits in a pile, and then it goes up. And I know it sounds strange, maybe, but I don't ever think about the part where it's gonna get to somebody. I don't know if that makes Yeah, yeah. That part doesn't occur to me, like, I just, I just put it out into the world, and then it to me, it's gone after that.

Grace 34:05
Oh, yeah, I can see that, since you do so much of it, yeah. And you seem very, very busy, like you, you know, very dedicated. So yeah, I can see where you would just keep going, and not really, but yeah, I'm glad I could remind you

Scott Benner 34:17
that. Yeah, thank you. No, it's really nice talk to me about what it felt like in the beginning being alone in your apartment. And if that made you think I should not have left my parents house.

Grace 34:28
No, I didn't think of it as that. I went into it knowing that it was going to be difficult, especially at first, that was probably the hardest time, because it was just like, Oh my God, when are things gonna get easier? When am I gonna feel more comfortable with everything at that point, still, I was like, six months in with diabetes, so that was still kind of new and new job, and, yeah, living on my own so and then listening to that resilience episode, it just. Clicked in my mind, like, why? I was like, Okay, I should definitely be a lot easier myself. Because, no wonder, no wonder I feel so alone. Because, you know, it's all these different things. And I was like, okay, you know, I just keep doing what I'm doing. I know I'm doing good things for myself. Just keep that up. And then I knew it would get better. So

Scott Benner 35:19
it tumbles on itself, like, once you feel alone, then what you feel bad for feeling alone?

Grace 35:26
Yes, yeah, I would like, I'd be like, Well, no, I'm not alone. I have a wonderful family, and, you know, I have a best friend who I call all the time, and you know, I have people here, and I have this new job, and I'm, I should be proud of myself, but I felt alone. Yeah, it was just like a whole I, yeah,

Scott Benner 35:45
I felt bad. I don't deserve to feel bad because I have good support. Now you feel bad for feeling bad and you're feeling bad for not appreciating the people in your life. That's what it feels like,

Grace 35:57
right? Yeah, I remember, especially in the beginning, my mom was like, she understood, but didn't understand that I was just so I was just angry and sad about everything, and that made me be kind of like a bitch to her. I didn't mean to and it was entirely because of how I felt. And she was like, oh, remember when you used to like me. I was like, Mom, I'm just sad, like, I'm just so sad, and I'm not me right now. Like, it's not, I know you're here, but it's not anything that you're doing. It's anything that you're doing. Like,

Scott Benner 36:30
all the different transitions in life are so difficult, because just as you get accustomed to one thing or one way or how a person is, then forces that have nothing to do with you impact their lives, they start to morph and change, which, you know, it's funny, because when you step back, you say, Oh, this is awesome. That's growing, yeah, you know, like, from a long view, you're like, oh, grace is having experiences and learning how to tough them out and get through them and like, all this stuff. But short term, you're like, Oh, why is grace? Mean, yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah. It sucks. Everything sucks about being alive, except for the alive part. You know, right? You know who seems to be having a great time? The bouncing kid. He doesn't give a about anything.

Grace 37:08
No, exactly. He's He's fine. How old is he? Eight

Scott Benner 37:11
or nine? He was like, eight or nine? Oh, yeah. He has no response. Yeah. He's good grace. I want to point something out that long time listeners of the podcast are going to recognize that when I was a young man and saw Jurassic Park for the first time, that we tormented a woman in the theater for shushing us, and that one of the ways we tormented her was by sitting in front of her and bouncing in our chair, which some people might see as karma. And I realize that now, but I want to point out the difference here is that I was being annoying on purpose. There you go. The kid didn't realize this and how you act. I know this seems like a fine line to walk, but I knew I was doing the wrong thing. Common Sense. People get what I'm saying here exactly this difficulty with your mom and you in a relationship. Does it exist as you're leaving? Or do you get it straight before you it does it because you're it's, you're at the apartment, and this is happening, right?

Grace 38:04
So this happened a couple months before I moved, okay, and my mom is like my best friend, so we, we figured it out, okay, but for that time period, I couldn't go to her about everything. I ended up going to my best friend. And my best friend's mom actually helped me a little bit with that kind of stuff. Oh,

Scott Benner 38:22
I can't wait for your mom to hear that. But why couldn't you go to your mom at that point? What? What did it feel like? The disconnect was I

Grace 38:29
just felt like it hurt her so much, that I was hurting so much, and that she couldn't do anything to help me. Gotcha. And I remember telling her I was like, I, you know, I went to Katie, my best friend, and her mom, and I was like, Are you upset that I went to them instead of you? She was like, no, just whatever, whatever helps you the most. Yeah, she wasn't upset about that. She understood. But yeah, it was just like, it hurt her so much that I was hurting so much, and I wanted to protect her from that at least a little bit. Well, however I could, it was

Scott Benner 39:00
lovely. Seriously, that's really kind of some deep thinking there. Yeah, especially your age. No offense, but that's awesome. Thank you. This turmoil right this time where you're you're going through this, I mean, I'm assuming, like, a grieving process that you're going through, oh, yes, did you have like, other struggles like that in your life prior to this, or is this a new way of you feeling that came on just from the diabetes, I

Grace 39:26
think mostly from just the diabetes, because I had always wondered. I was like, I'm perfectly healthy. I you know, most of the people in my family are healthy. I wonder what my thing is going to be that, like, changes my life forever. Yeah, end up being this because I was like,

Scott Benner 39:42
I think it might be the lottery for a while. Yeah? Like,

Grace 39:47
I'm a little too lucky. I don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen, but something's gonna happen that's gonna change me. And ended up being this that's very thoughtful. I've always been very mature. And do you. Thinking you have other brothers and sisters, I have an older brother. Yes, interesting.

Scott Benner 40:03
What do your parents do for a living? Can I ask just vaguely,

Grace 40:07
my dad's a business owner, and my mom works for him.

Scott Benner 40:12
And you're sitting around thinking something's gonna come for me. What's it gonna be? You were like, maybe I'll be a famous YouTuber. No, maybe I'll win a bunch of money at the church lot. No, it wasn't bingo, and so I get value. Is that how it feels? It feels like one thing's gonna happen to you that's not great, and this is the one.

Grace 40:31
No, that's, that's honestly how I felt. I I had a feeling that something big was gonna happen to me like this, but I just didn't know what it was.

Scott Benner 40:43
Do you have any other feelings now or about stock picks? Anything at all that you could share with me?

Grace 40:49
No, no. Stock Picks. I'm not good with that stuff. If

Scott Benner 40:52
you have any big thoughts about that stuff, please do reach out. It seems like you might. We'll let you know. Yeah, that's really so did you have a conscious thought at some point you're like, Oh, my thing came it's diabetes, kind

Grace 41:02
of yeah, like I said I in school, I was like, Oh, these poor suckers, you know, that's gonna be tough. And then my my pediatric clinical, the one kid that I consistently took care of was a diabetic who's just pretty newly diagnosed. And then I go to work, and one of my patients that I helped take care of. One of the first ones was a type one diabetic with gastroparesis, and I was like, yeah, something, something's brewing. Something's brewing here.

Scott Benner 41:28
Have you listened long enough to hear me say that idea, like, everybody kind of gets something? Yeah, yeah. I do believe that. I believe that too. I don't think it's because, like, you know, Odin gives it to your whatever you believe. Like, I just think that. Like, I mean, I don't want to get too deep here, but, but why not grace? I'll go deep. I don't care. Would you I think we're just like, you know, organisms that, like, weirdly developed and the things that can think, and we're really delicate, and it's just hard to make a perfect one that stays perfect the whole time. That's all, yeah,

Grace 41:58
exactly, because, yeah, we obviously grow the most through our struggles. And if we were all, you know, good and you know, everything was great all the time, then would be a lot less interesting. Well,

Scott Benner 42:11
even physiologically, like, you know that cellular change is where growth, you know, you grow, and things morph and change. And like they, you know, they write and rewrites. What cancer is, right? Like, it's just a cell that rewrote the wrong way. And so, I mean, stuff goes wrong, and then there's outside influences, and, you know, from, I mean, everything, like, there's stuff you put in your body, there's stuff you breathe in, there's, you know, stuff you eat, there's all that stuff changes, things, little bits at a time, and stuff goes wrong. I'm not saying you did something that gave yourself diabetes, but, like,

Grace 42:44
No, you know, yeah, there's things you can control. Definitely, there's a lot of things that you can control, and then there's just some things that you can't Yeah, you have to just take what you get and keep

Scott Benner 42:53
going. And even the stuff you can control, there's an argument for how much you can control it exactly, you know. Like, yeah, you know, when you hear people say things like, you should eat better. I'm like, Well, sure, but what if I don't have access to that food? Yeah, exactly, you know, what if I grew up in a way where people just didn't ever feed that to me and now my palate like, oh, change it. Like, okay, great. You change your thing that's wrong with you. You don't even like, yeah.

Grace 43:15
It's not always that simple. And everybody has their own, their own situation, and you just have to, yeah, as an individual, you have to decide what's best for you

Scott Benner 43:24
exactly. So you have to have trouble dating in 2024 being this smart, right? You can't find a boy you like, am I? Right? So

Grace 43:32
interesting? I actually am in my first, like, serious relationship. We're only a few months in, but I have a good feeling, and you know, I'm good with my feelings. He

Scott Benner 43:43
hasn't said anything or done anything really weird yet. No, nothing worrisome. He hasn't ignored you to play a video game.

Grace 43:51
Nope. Before that, so much struggle, so much struggle.

Scott Benner 43:56
Yeah, no, I know even, how do you meet people like people? I'm gonna use a lot of words I shouldn't be using right now, but like, people, like, swipe up in your stories and, like, try to be like, it's like, right?

Grace 44:06
I know, I know. No, it's so awful. I'm so glad I didn't meet him that way, because, yeah, I was on dating apps for a little while, but then I was like, there's just no way. There's just no way that I'm gonna connect with somebody on the level that I want to through this stupid thing. So he ends up being one of my best friend's friends. So met him through there at a bar. So somebody

Scott Benner 44:27
set you up, yeah, and tell people the dating apps are sex apps, right? They're not really, for the most part. Yeah, right, if you're not just trying to, like, hook up, like that, hook up means sex now, right? Yes, Grace, it used to mean kissing. Did you know that

Grace 44:43
I heard that? I heard that? Or just, like, making out, right? Yeah, maybe,

Scott Benner 44:47
maybe touching things over clothing. Now it means, like, a whole, like, other thing, huh? How many boys did you have to go through, like, the dumb ones before you got through this

Grace 44:56
one? Uh, let's see. Hold on. Let. Like, do a real tally boyfriend. I had a I didn't have anyone in high school, and then in college, I had my first, like, just kind of casual boyfriend for a couple months my sophomore year. And then right before diabetes and everything, I met this guy on a hinge. He was stupid. I I don't know why I would. Just wanted somebody honestly, so just those two before him, yeah.

Scott Benner 45:28
What does that mean? You just wanted somebody to feel alone? Yeah, yep. How does this boy handle the diabetes stuff? He is

Grace 45:36
so supportive, and he doesn't pretend like he knows any more than he does. He just knows that when I go low, I need lemonade or juice, and then when I go high, he needs to get me water. But he's always like, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And I'll usually like, correct my low. And then I'll be like, you just want to get me lemonade. Fine. You can go. And then I just don't drink it. He just wants to get me it

Scott Benner 45:59
and let him get you something. Oh, wow, you really, yeah, it's possible you're in love grace, maybe. I mean, who knows if you're being if you're being that nice for no reason? You very much. I could say, who knows? Because I just want you to know that my wife would be like, I don't want lemonade stop.

Grace 46:20
Well, we're in the we're in the beginning stages too. So let's, let's take that into account. Yeah, I would never, I would not be mean to him at this point. You're being, like, a year,

Scott Benner 46:33
good something for him to look forward to, awesome. Right about the first time that happens, he's gonna be like, Oh, thank God, I can play Call of Duty again, I didn't realize that,

Grace 46:41
right? No, Minecraft. He's on Minecraft now. Oh,

Scott Benner 46:48
awesome. I hear things. Do you think that the way that it's set up now, like dating, the way you meet people, you think you'll like, hold on to a good guy quicker than you would like, do you mean? Like, like, yeah, right. Because it feels like it was so hard to find one. Like, right where you're gonna find the next one.

Grace 47:07
It's so interesting, because with him too, like, like, I said, it's just a feeling, and it's not, I'm usually pretty realistic and grounded, and I can be like, okay, you know, obviously this is still the very beginning. I don't want to get in too far, too quickly, sure, but with him like I just know I can see his character, and I know that he's good, and I know that nothing's gonna happen. Nothing could make him leave that easily. I don't know. I just know good.

Scott Benner 47:38
Look out for small things online betting. Be careful of that. That often turns into a problem. Good look for that one looking through you while you're talking. You know what I mean, like not really listening. Don't do that. Don't let him do that one. Don't let him pressure you into things you don't want to do. Right? Exactly, right. Yeah. Does he drive too fast? No, awesome, no. And

Grace 47:59
whenever he does, like, a hard stop. It's like, Oh, I'm sorry that was too

Scott Benner 48:02
fast, really. Oh, God, it is really, yeah, how does he look at little kids on our

Grace 48:07
first date? He pointed out a little kid to me and then made faces at him. So he's good

Scott Benner 48:13
grace. Okay, yeah, you have no chance. This will probably end with a marriage. I know. Yeah, I got it all right. Okay. Well, just make sure, like, you know, keep checking in with somebody else, not your mom, who thinks you should be with Prince Andrew or whatever. I don't know is that a good person? Exactly? It's possible that's not a good person. Hey, did you hear that? I heard the I don't follow this at all, but I think the red headed Prince guy and the girl from that USA TV show might be having problems, really? Do you know what I'm talking about when I said that?

Grace 48:44
Yeah, I think so. Can't think of her names. Yeah, I can either, but I know who you're talking

Scott Benner 48:48
about. I moved here and tried to start a podcast that didn't work. Yeah, that's

Grace 48:52
always a telltale sign the podcast goes south.

Scott Benner 48:58
People right now, who know? Who know about, like, the Royal stuff? Are like, I can't believe you can't think of this name. Hold on a second grace. Give me one second, because I'm going to type in red head Prince and see what I get. Oh yeah, there it is. That popped right up. Prince Harry, yes. Prince Harry, yep. And Megan, right? Yes. I don't know if I what I heard is right. Also, do you know why I can't tell if it's right or not. Have you seen like because the click bait social media stuff has gotten it has no soul. Now, like before, it used to start with some sliver of truth, but now they don't even, they don't even care about that anymore. Like they'll do it. No, they don't even try before. They try to craft some sort of lie around the truth to get you in but now, like, they do it with sports teams all the time. Like, it's like, here's the, you know, I don't know, the Red Sox, like fan page, and it's like, the Red Sox cut their most popular player. And then you get to the story, and it's not true. Yeah, they're just lazy. They're lazy. I actually think it's more than that grace. I think. What? Yes, I think that they're trying to get the people who will take the time to correct them and or yell at them or chastise them to jump in and make comments so that the algorithm keeps feeding people the story. Oh, I think they want you to call them out. Yeah,

Grace 50:16
no, I see that. I see where you're coming from. I agree

Scott Benner 50:18
this is a leaning into being a dick situation, and it's working for them because of how the algorithm works.

Grace 50:23
Yes, yeah, yeah, no. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's gotten out of hand.

Scott Benner 50:28
Should I go that way with the podcast? Should I just start saying things I know people will be upset by

Grace 50:31
There you go, so they'll yell at me. Let's add a little spice. Make it fun. I'll try now,

Scott Benner 50:37
Grace. I'm 100% positive that if you would have just taken cinnamon, you could have cured your type one diabetes there. Oh,

Grace 50:45
my God. Oh my god. No

Scott Benner 50:47
people, yeah, one and then I'll get super popular, right? Is that how that'll work? Yeah?

Grace 50:52
Okay, yeah, my God. So people will eat it right up. How do you deal with

Scott Benner 50:56
social media, especially now that you're still young, but you're a professional at the same time. Like, do you stay off of it? I'm still on

Grace 51:03
it, but I haven't really changed much about it with type one diabetes. I don't know. I just kind of keep to myself for the most part. You're not looking to, yeah, yeah, not really looking to. I know I've never had any desire to, because of this, become an influencer for type one diabetes. I never really had that.

Scott Benner 51:21
How about for nursing? That's huge, by the way. Oh yes,

Grace 51:26
yeah, that's why I want to go into diabetes education. Definitely. Yeah,

Scott Benner 51:31
I'd like to hear more about that. Like, that's a shift you're making, like because of your own diagnosis or because of something you're seeing. I

Grace 51:38
honestly was pretty disappointed with the amount of knowledge that healthcare workers have about diabetes for how prevalent it is in that setting. So I take every opportunity I can to teach my co workers whenever they have a patient with that, because I was talking to my charge nurse one day and we were trying to figure out the insulin drip protocol, yeah, and I ended up teaching her a couple things about it that she had absolutely no idea. And then I was like, Well, wait, I could do this to so many more people. I could reach so many more people if I was a diabetes educator. So I kind of put that together, and now I'm working on getting my 150 hours in before I can take my test to get certified, and then hopefully, in like, a year, I'll be able to do that. But, yeah, it's huge. It's huge to be able to have that takes

Scott Benner 52:28
150 hours to be eligible for the test.

Grace 52:31
Yes, of management education. Oh, so

Scott Benner 52:35
they should let me take the test. I don't want to be a diabetes educator, but I would like to take the test.

Grace 52:40
I know I'd like to take the test now, just to see how much I know just from having it. Well, that's,

Scott Benner 52:45
that's what I meant. Yeah, I don't want to be a diabetes educator. Or do I think I should be? I'm just saying, like, I wonder, I wonder how easy the test is. Is I guess what I was wondering? Because that would I know me too, you know what I mean? Because maybe that's why people run into so many people who are like, my diabetes educator doesn't seem to know what they're talking about. Like, is it? Yeah, oh, that's true. Is the barrier of entry not what it should be. And maybe that's on purpose, like, maybe we don't have enough, and you're trying to get people in there and hope they learn on the job. Or, I don't know, but I'd be interested if

Grace 53:14
I equate it to nursing school. So nursing school is basically set up so that we can pass the NCLEX. And then once you actually become a nurse, you learn pretty much everything on the job. Yeah. So I'm assuming that with this test to become a diabetes educator, you study for the test, and then once you get on the job, then that's how you kind of learn when you're exposed to more people and cases. And, yeah, I think that's kind of how it goes. I'm just confused. I don't know how people are diabetes educators without having a personal tie to it, being able to understand it on that level. But it's great. It's great.

Scott Benner 53:53
So you're telling me that when I need a job, Grace, I learn how to take the test so I can get the job. I don't necessarily learn the job so I can do the job. I learn how to pass the test

Grace 54:03
for health care. Yeah,

Scott Benner 54:06
okay, because then you pick a lane, and then you you dig down once you get there, right, and learn the family, all right. But then there's turnover in nursing, so, oh

Grace 54:19
yeah, so maybe that's a whole nother. Yeah, more, yeah, it's short staffing and, yeah, all that stuff sucks.

Scott Benner 54:27
It's just an imperfect system, really.

Grace 54:30
It really is. All right,

Scott Benner 54:32
is there anything we haven't talked to? I want to make sure I'm not missing anything off your list, because

Grace 54:36
I've been all over the place today. Uh, no, I think that's pretty much it. Yeah, that was great. Yeah, well,

Scott Benner 54:41
we're not done. I'm just making sure I didn't, like, I want to make sure I didn't I'm not kicking you off. I just wanted to make sure that, like, I didn't miss anything. We went over dating, we went over going through school. Like, oh, I guess I do have this question, yeah, what did you get from the podcast? So, like, if you start in a place where you're, you know. So having, you know, psychological struggles like, right? You're trying to get through this diagnosis, you get to a point where you can't really look your mom in the face, because you feel like you're letting her down because you're not doing well, and you know, you're off, by the way, it's crazy. You figured all this out. You're all figuring out all this stuff. But when you intersect the podcast, like, you first feel like you're not alone, I'm assuming. But then how does it grow from there, like, how does it turn into stability? And you know, you understanding diabetes and all the other things that you have now

Grace 55:30
from the podcast, from the time that I listened to it, like you said, I felt less alone. And then the information that you gave in the way that you presented, it was in a way that it had never been explained to me before, and it's in a way that is so much more useful in daily life that I can, like, pick from it and take what I need. So I was basically able to through your different episodes, like the Pro Tip series and the ones about mental health stuff like that, I was able to just kind of take those pieces and fill in what I still hadn't figured out, and that turned into just easier management and more compassion on myself for things, for when things did not go the way that I thought they would go. So yeah, I was able to just kind of pick different pieces that I needed from you, and then just kind of helped fill in the blanks.

Scott Benner 56:25
That's awesome. Oh, I'm so glad. Yeah. Can I be petty for a second? Would you mind? Yes, do you ever get Do you ever get petty? Oh, yeah, time to time, I'm not going to be able to find the review where the person I'm not going to find it, but there's a review of the podcast somewhere where a person says, like, you know, I'm done, by the way, if you make content online, eventually somebody's like, I'm done with this. Like, it happens all the time. Oh, yeah. But this person was done with me, because now Scott's pretending to be a mental health something. Now, first of all, I'm not pretending to be anything. I'm me. Okay, yeah. And here are the ways I think about these things. You do whatever you want with that, but the same content that made someone go, this guy's not a therapist. He's pretending he's a therapist. But I'm not pretending I'm a therapist. I'm talking to a therapist, and I'm telling you how I'm intersecting with what she's saying to me. But that's fine. That person, that same content, that they were like, oh, helped you, right? Yeah, that's so wonderful. Like, because, yeah, I was having this thought this morning. It's the end of the year grace, right? I've been doing this for a decade. I've been making this podcast for a decade. So every year, there's this giant whiteboard in the corner of my room with just stuff scribbled all over it, of like, you know, ideas that I have for the podcast and things that I think, you know, will make it interesting, things I think will make it helpful for people, things I think will keep it alive. Like, you know, like, all this stuff you have no idea, probably to somebody who doesn't do this, it probably sounds ridiculous, but trust me, if I put most of you in charge of an already popular podcast, you'd run it into the ground in three months. It's such a big I'm not saying I'm special. I'm saying there's like, there's a big picture, and then there's a big picture, and you kind of have to have your head wrapped around all of it at the same time and then make good decisions along the way and actually pick things that people go like, Oh, when he first said they were going to make, I don't understand episodes. I thought that was stupid, but they're not. He said there's going to be a four part series on resilience. What does he know about resilience, like that kind of thing? Yeah. So I'm looking at my board here, and I know what I want to do in 2025 I've been stuck, not stuck. This is kind of my time off this week, right? So I, you know, I'm just not intersecting with the podcast much for the last couple of days because of Christmas, and I just kind of like, put it aside for a little while just to relax. But now I'm back. Like, I got in the shower this morning and I was like, oh, it's the day after Christmas, and I'm already like, you know, thinking about, like, how do I make content in November next year that, you know? No, it's true. Yeah, just to hear you talk about it, and then I can kind of remember that, that that's one of the reviews that sticks with me this year, is that this person was like, ew, like, stop this. And you're like, oh, you know what really helped me, that resilience series. So, no,

Grace 59:18
it's it's so true. I completely see what you're saying. I could definitely not manage a podcast and be, you know, have the creativity to, you know, come up with content constantly and keep people interested. And, no, it's, it's admirable. I couldn't do it. I definitely couldn't. No,

Scott Benner 59:35
you're nice, but, like, it's not, trust me, it's What a dumb thing to be good at. It's also that, like, the way people want information shifts slowly. You don't see it happening because people tend to look more at the really super popular stuff and say, like, oh, this, this is what I should be doing, whereas I never think that way. Like, if something's already super popular at best, you're trying to co opt it right the. Way to stay popular is to come up with that thing before somebody else, not, not after everyone figures it out already. And and the internet's becoming YouTube, for example, is becoming videos about telling you how to be good at the thing that I'm good at. Have you noticed that? You know what? I mean? No, I've noticed that. Yeah, yeah. And so basically, some person got out ahead of something, became a, you know, I don't know, a figurehead on the thing, and then they got through the content. It's over. Now, there's no more to say, right? And so now they pivot to telling you about how you could be as successful as they are doing the thing they're doing, except that is not true. Yeah, they already did it. You can't do it now, like it's done, yeah? Because

Grace 1:00:51
it's short lived. You can't drag that out, you know, beyond just what it was, right? Just, you know, 100%

Scott Benner 1:00:58
like they've done it already, and the world moving on. You don't realize it. So whereas I think a lot of people make the mistake, if they are going to put something on the internet, they make the mistake of trying to see what's popular, to see if they can mimic it. In my head, I'm 24 months ahead of here, trying to figure out what's going to be popular, and then putting out content, and then waiting to see, like, Oh, what did people intersect with? Well, but they not. And then, you know, having to ignore the noise of the people who just want to be upset. Or, you know,

Grace 1:01:29
right? Yeah, because, yeah, you have to look in the long term picture, like you said, like the big picture, but then the bigger picture, you need to have some longevity in what you're talking about.

Scott Benner 1:01:40
And you gotta guess right once in a while, and get lucky sometimes, and, you know, right? All that other Yeah, just go with it. But anyway, that really the reason I brought all that up. You know, the people who don't like me are right now, like, Oh, good, an example of Scott being great. I'm saying that. I think you have to think about life that way. Yes, the diabetes is so easy to get super focused on about what's happening right now, and what is somebody telling me is the right thing to do, like, I don't think that matters as much as you figuring out what's right for you and figuring out your path to it that works, and even if somebody else says that's not right, if it's right for You, it's perfect. You know,

Grace 1:02:21
that's where a lot changed for me, because me before this I, I mean, I'm still a people pleaser to an extent, but I really just wanted to do things to make other people happy, and what other people saw me as and fit into that. But it truly was this diagnosis that helped me kind of be more aware of what I want and not let those other things kind of dictate what I did. So I agree, and then I was able to actually see like what I thought would be best for me in the long term. And was able to kind of block, you know, other people out, and I had never been able to do that before, until my diagnosis. That's

Scott Benner 1:03:05
awesome. That's really great. I'm happy for you. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, yeah. So you're an oncology nurse right now, but you're going to get your hours to try to take the test to be a diabetes educator. You're going to try to be a CD CES. Is that right? Yeah? CD CES, yeah. It's so long, I think it's a mistake having changed it, but that's between them and and, God, it's not up to me. Like, how do you see yourself working after that in a hospital setting, or in a in a clinic, in a private practice? What do you think is the best way to reach people?

Grace 1:03:35
I will probably be working in a clinic, I'd say, or private practice, yeah, something where, obviously, the hours are more consistent. I've noticed with just how I am the hospital 312 a week doesn't work for me the best. So I'm going to end up going to a doctor's office regular nine to five, and then hopefully I can reach the people who have been newly diagnosed for the most part, but doesn't

Scott Benner 1:04:02
work for you because of diabetes or just how you like to live, little

Grace 1:04:06
bit of both. It just sucks to work back to back days and like, I come home and I have to have dinner at like, nine o'clock, and then my blood sugar is high all night, and then I wake up and I feel all brain foggy and have a headache and stuff like that, and then have to go care for people. It's not ideal, but I'll do it. I'll definitely do it for the time being. Okay, doable. But

Scott Benner 1:04:28
yeah, are you using an algorithm or using Omnipod five, or are you just using dash Omnipod five? You are okay. Do you think? Do you like the algorithms?

Grace 1:04:37
I think so. I've adjusted them a little bit, okay, because I'm usually pretty insulin sensitive, but yeah, with the pens, I noticed that I could control it more and keep it lower. But I wish that algorithm had it so that my average was 90 instead of 110 I think that would help it a lot

Scott Benner 1:04:55
like a lower target, yeah, yeah. Does it make you think of switching pumps or. You like the tubeless nature of it so much. It's not that big of a deal for you. I

Grace 1:05:06
really like the tubeless because I knew that I wanted to, because I'm pretty active, so I liked the idea of that, and that probably won't cause me to change it. I'll just keep I'll just keep going, yeah, right now and then see what else comes up.

Scott Benner 1:05:20
I hope they, I mean, just, not just omnipot, but I hope everybody, like, tries to, you know, tweak their things so that they can have lower targets for people, if that's what they want. Right

Grace 1:05:31
now, me too, because I get that you don't want to make it so that everybody goes super low, because then, obviously, that's sure, more of an issue, but, but I don't know. I feel like the people who have it really under control and manage well, you know, should be have that choice at least, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:05:46
yeah, I agree. So hopefully they can make the adjustments that make that possible. Hopefully they certainly see it on, you know, the DIY systems, there's, you can make much lower targets, and Arden's on trio. And, I mean, I think her Target's 85 so, oh, that's great, yeah. I mean, she's not running around stopping lows constantly, so it must be doable. Get out there and do it. Talking to, oh yeah, get that. Let the people get out there and do it. I really appreciate this. Please say hi to your mom for me. I'm glad she listens. That's awesome. I will. I will. Do you guys ever talk about it? Do you ever like, Have you ever gotten a text from your mom that was like, did you hear the crazy story on the Juicebox Podcast today? Or does that happen in your life? No,

Grace 1:06:29
she usually she doesn't text me. She always just waits to tell me in person. Oh, you do it in person. I was like, yeah. It's always like, oh, you know, because I come home pretty often, I still get to see her, or she sleeps over my apartment, so I still see her. Wait,

Scott Benner 1:06:43
your mom comes to see you, and you guys have sleepovers. Yeah, that's awesome. My wife, my wife, would love to know that. Like, she's so like, Arden just got home, and she's like, Arden's home. And I'm like, I know she's like, super excited, yeah, and then, no, it's great. One night, she's like, she's like, she's like, I'm gonna stay in here with Arden for a while. And I was like, You're gonna sleep with Arden? She's like, maybe we'll have, like, a little sleep. I'm like, okay, yeah, she's super excited. I'm glad you and your mom get along so nicely. It's wonderful. That's sweet. Yeah, we do. I have to ask you, then I'm gonna, I'll finish with this. I think I know the answer to this question already. But are you planning on having kids? Yes, yeah, definitely. You want a lot of them, or a few of them, or what do you want? I've

Grace 1:07:21
always wanted at least two, so a boy and a girl, and then maybe a third, maybe another girl, so they could have they could be sisters, because I always wanted a sister and I never had a sister. You always

Scott Benner 1:07:32
wanted a sister. Okay, do you worry about the diabetes aspect of it? Now,

Grace 1:07:36
I do, but I also feel like, you know, I'll feel a little guilty at first if they do get it, but I'm not going into it thinking like that any because even if they do, I know I'll have kind of a head start on understanding how to deal with it. Yeah. So I yeah, I try not to look at it as like, Oh, they're doomed, and I'm doomed, you know, just kind of take it how it comes.

Scott Benner 1:08:01
You also do have, like, a an expectation that something's gonna happen, right? Yeah, you have that feeling. So if it's that, then it's that. Is that how you feel about it?

Grace 1:08:10
Kind of, yeah, yeah. I just know too that I'll be able to handle it. I don't know. I have faith in myself, yeah. Have you

Scott Benner 1:08:18
always had that faith? Or is that new? That's new.

Grace 1:08:22
That has not been around here for a while, up until this past year. And

Scott Benner 1:08:27
diabetes brought you that faith in yourself, Oh yeah, and

Grace 1:08:31
compassion for myself. I used to think so black and white, like, oh, it has to be like this, or it's wrong, or it's completely, you know, just all messed up. Nope, nope. I have faith in myself. Now,

Scott Benner 1:08:44
that's part of growing up, too. You know that, though, right? Yeah, it's true, yeah, like, like, I mean, I don't know that diabetes didn't, like, speed it up for you, right? Yeah, right. Or bring it into focus for you, which I'm sure it did all that stuff, but yeah, you would have gotten to it eventually. Just probably would have taken longer, exactly, yeah, that's interesting. Wow, you're on like, such a journey. It's nice. I'm jealous. Thank you that you're young. I just want to say that

Grace 1:09:12
I'm getting up there though, 24 Oh yeah, in the mid 20s,

Scott Benner 1:09:16
it's almost over. Grace. All right. Hold on one second. For me, this was really great. I appreciate you doing this. Yeah, thank you

having an easy to use, an accurate blood glucose meter is just one click away. Contour next.com/juicebox That's right. Today's episode is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. The conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, you. The episode you just enjoyed was sponsored by the twist A I D system powered by tide pool. If you want a commercially available insulin pump with twist loop that offers unmatched personalization and precision or peace of mind, you want Twist, twist.com/juicebox, 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 or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're looking for some fresh perspective, the bold beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698, in your podcast player, or you can go to Juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. Hey, what's up? Everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way recording doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrong way recording.com. You got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.

Please support the sponsors

---

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

#1485 Cookie Mom

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

Tiffany recounts her misdiagnosis, a life-saving low blood sugar emergency rescue, and exploring GLP-1 treatment options with her endocrinologist.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

---

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

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

Tiffany 0:15
Hi, my name is Tiffany. I have had some form of diabetes for the last 11 years, and recently found out within the last two years that I'm actually type one

Scott Benner 0:27
nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code Juicebox at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five, free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink AG, one.com/juice, box. To get this offer. Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is and a US resident? If you are, I'd love it if you would go to T 1d, exchange.org/juice, box. And take the survey. When you complete that survey, your answers are used to move type one diabetes research of all kinds. So if you'd like to help with type one research, but don't have time to go to a doctor or an investigation and you want to do something right there from your sofa, this is the way t 1d exchange.org/juice, box. It should not take you more than about 10 minutes. The episode you're about to listen to was sponsored by touched by type one. Go check them out right now on Facebook, Instagram, and of course, at touched by type one.org, check out that Programs tab when you get to the website to see all the great things that they're doing for people living with type one diabetes touched by type one.org the show you're about to listen to is sponsored by the ever since 365 the ever since 365 has exceptional accuracy over one year, and is the most accurate CGM in The low range that you can get ever since cgm.com/juice cgm.com/juicebox, this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes and their mini med 780 G system designed to help ease the burden of diabetes management, imagine fewer worries about mis Bolus or miscalculated carbs thanks to meal detection technology and automatic correction doses. Learn more and get started today at Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox.

Tiffany 2:49
Hi. My name is Tiffany. I will be 42 in three weeks. I have had some form of diabetes for the last 11 years, and recently found out, within the last two years that I'm actually type one last

Scott Benner 3:03
two years, two years. Yes, okay, let's go through that. But first I want to tease people out a little bit. Sure you have a great story, but you're on the podcast most specifically because you saved yourself with G, VO, hypo, pen recently. Is that right? I did. Okay, all right, we'll get back to that. Sorry. I just, you know, want to make sure people hang on, because it's going to be a good story. Let's see 42 now, just about your birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. Maybe we share a very similar birthday on the 12th.

Tiffany 3:36
That's my daughter's birthday on the 21st Oh, congratulations.

Scott Benner 3:39
Arden's is the 22nd that's so cool. Yes, please don't send cards. Let's see you've had what does it mean you've had diabetes for 11 years? How were you diagnosed?

Tiffany 3:49
Oddly enough, I was diagnosed with pre diabetic. We were trying to have our first daughter, and we were having trouble conceiving. So the OB did a whole bunch of the fun little blood work that they do, came back as pre diabetic. Changed the way I was eating, cut out all of the extra fruit I was eating, and was able to get pregnant within like three weeks. So they immediately put me on insulin, sent me to a diabetic educator. But again, no one told me how to actually use the insulin, or that my insulin needs would vary greatly while I was pregnant. Hey,

Scott Benner 4:32
wait a minute. So did they see you as pre diabetes type two? Yes. Okay, and so somebody, Oh, that's interesting. So you got your blood sugar down a little bit, that got you pregnant, and then you don't have any direction, even through the pregnancy, about how to manage,

Tiffany 4:52
um, just a whole lot of threats from my OB that if I can't get my blood sugars under control, my baby is going to be in the NICU. Too overweight, I would cry leaving every OB appointment. And I'm not the type of person to cry regularly, so I would be so upset, probably because of the hormones as well, but I would be so upset leaving those appointments because they were threatening me about my blood sugars, and I was doing everything I could to keep them in the range that they wanted them in, but nobody that there was no education really offered on exactly how to do that.

Scott Benner 5:28
The OB sent you to an endo. No, no. Who gave you the insulin? They

Tiffany 5:33
did give me a referral for an endo, but the OB actually first sent me to nutritionist,

Scott Benner 5:38
okay, yeah, well, yeah, I'm in the very beginning. That's what got you going. But once you're on insulin, who's managing the insulin, who's prescribing

Tiffany 5:45
it, I would see an endo once every three months,

Scott Benner 5:49
okay? And that was just for the did you think that was just for the pregnancy, or did you know that was forever? I thought it was just for the pregnancy. Okay? There's always a lot of confusion here in these stories. Okay, so you believe yourself? Do you think then that you're type two, or do you think that you're experiencing gestational once you're pregnant? I'm thinking

Tiffany 6:11
I'm type two at that point. Okay, my insulin needs obviously dropped off to next to nothing right after. I had to be like, in the hospital. While we were still in the hospital, they were like, Okay, well, we're gonna give you like one unit of insulin. I'm like, wait a second, I just had like 80 units of insulin with breakfast yesterday. And then they put me so out of the hospital. They put me on Metformin, which was a roller coaster, because I had crazy gi effects with metformin. Yeah, I don't find out until a few years later that the one that they finally put me on that was that I could tolerate, was the osmotic, extended release version, which I find out later when I drive myself to the hospital with a high blood sugar because I stopped taking it cold turkey, which was a very bad thing, but I couldn't handle taking it because my my insurance changed and would no longer cover the osmotic release or extended release, so They just gave me the different version without telling me. My pharmacy changed the prescription without telling me.

Scott Benner 7:26
And you were like, once you started having the GI issues again, you're like, No, thank you. Yes, I see. And you are, well, let me, let me get a tiny bit more background. How many kids do you have? Sure, two, two. But that first one's about 10 years old, yep, okay. And then How old's the second? Two and a half? Oh, both girls, right? Yep. And okay, so you are using a ton of insulin during the pregnancy. You experience a drop in a need as soon as the pregnancy is over. Is that right? Yep, okay, and then they put you on Metformin, because now they're treating you interesting. Okay, so then they put you on Metformin. Is the Metformin keeping your a 1c down, or is it not really helping?

Tiffany 8:13
I'm kind of riding in the mid sixes. Okay,

Scott Benner 8:16
mid sixes for years. How many? Probably

Tiffany 8:20
about, well, they start experimenting with other things because the mid six is just that wasn't a good enough target, right? Um, so I'm like, Okay, I'm eating good, like decent. I'm not eating terribly. My portions are good. I'm not eating like cake every day. I'm exercising regularly, and I just can't lose weight. I'm doing every everything that I'm doing should suggest that I should be losing weight. I can't lose weight. So we start experimenting. Okay,

Scott Benner 8:50
before, before you tell me about the experiment, the weight. Did you have it before the pregnancy? Or did it come with the pregnancy? I

Tiffany 8:57
had it before the pregnancy. I started having issues with my weight around 2007 because that's when we actually found out I was diagnosed with Hashimotos. Oh,

Scott Benner 9:09
okay, okay. Oh, and so nobody, all right, well, we'll get to that. So, so you had Hashimotos 2007 is it well regulated? Is your TSH under two or no. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, who is making life with diabetes easier with the mini med 780 G system. The mini med 780 G automated insulin delivery system anticipates, adjusts and corrects every five minutes. Real world results show people achieving up to 80% time and range with recommended settings, without increasing lows. But of course, Individual results may vary. The 780 G works around the clock, so you can focus on what matters. Have you heard about Medtronic extended infusion set? It's the first and only infusion set. Enabled for up to a seven day wear. This feature is repeatedly asked for, and Medtronic has delivered. 97% of people using the 780 G reported that they could manage their diabetes without major disruptions of sleep. They felt more free to eat what they wanted, and they felt less stress with fewer alarms and alerts you can't beat that. Learn more about how you can spend less time and effort managing your diabetes by visiting Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, who is making life with diabetes easier with the mini med 780 G system. The mini med 780 G automated insulin delivery system anticipates, adjusts and corrects every five minutes. Real world results show people achieving up to 80% time and range with recommended settings, without increasing lows. But of course, Individual results may vary. The 780 G works around the clock, so you can focus on what matters. Have you heard about Medtronic, extended infusion set? It's the first and only infusion set labeled for up to a seven day wear. This feature is repeatedly asked for, and Medtronic has delivered. 97% of people using the 780 G reported that they could manage their diabetes without major disruptions of sleep. They felt more free to eat what they wanted, and they felt less stress with fewer alarms and alerts. You can't beat that. Learn more about how you can spend less time and effort managing your diabetes by visiting Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox.

Tiffany 11:35
Yes, currently at point 740, good for you, but that was a roller coaster as well. Getting that

Scott Benner 11:42
straight was hard too. Yes, yeah, there's a lot of things that doctors aren't sometimes very good at helping with, and thyroid can definitely be one of them. Nope,

Tiffany 11:52
as soon as they would get me within the acceptable range, I was basically accused as being fat and lazy. Oh,

Scott Benner 12:00
so as soon as the TSH dropped, they were like, see, you haven't lost weight. Magically. You haven't lost weight magically. So you're not doing anything. You're eating poorly, correct? Yeah, it's tough. Oh, I lost my train of thought. What were you gonna tell me? Experimenting,

Tiffany 12:12
experimenting with different type two drugs. Thank you. I think I've tried, like, Invokana, that was, like, one massive yeast infection, like, for a month straight.

Scott Benner 12:24
Wait, I'm sorry, are you using yeast infection as a euphemism, or you actually had a yeast infection.

Tiffany 12:29
Actually had one. See, I never had one previously in my life, like ever, until I went on in O'Connor. Because

Scott Benner 12:36
the reason I asked is because I've heard people say, like, dumpster fire show stuff like that. But I was like, is yeast infection a euphemism? I don't know.

Tiffany 12:44
Now shows basically my favorite one to use. Sorry,

Scott Benner 12:49
you have a month long yeast infection sounds like a party. Do you know why? What about invocana? May or may not have had to do with that. I

Tiffany 12:56
don't know. But when I would Google, I would find that that was a common side effect for diabetics on

Scott Benner 13:03
that drug, or just on that drug really, okay, yep,

Tiffany 13:09
we tried glomiparine, and I would drop really, really low. I would have lows.

Scott Benner 13:13
Okay. So how long did you try that? For? Probably about a month or two. So how long is this, this whole experimenting going on for? I want to

Tiffany 13:24
say straight through to about 2018, so, like, four or five years. Okay? I tried Victoza, could again, GI issues. I really tried to stick it out. And I just, I couldn't. I was like, running to the bathroom at work, I would get sick and nauseous. It was terrible. And I was like this, I just can't an honest to God show. You're saying an honest to god actual show.

Scott Benner 13:51
Hey, I want to tell you I have a little bit of information here before we move forward. Invokana could the mechanism of Invokana, while effective in controlling blood sugar also leads to increased the risk of yeast infection. And diabetics, for several reasons, increased glucose in the urine, moist environment. I don't want to read this, but I'm going to the presence of glucose in the urine can contribute to a warm and moist environment in the general area which is conducive to yeast growth. Sorry about for that. One diabetic vulnerability are people with diabetes are already at a higher risk for infections altered microbiome. The altered glucose levels can disrupt the balance of the normal microbiome in the general area, allowing yeast to proliferate. Well, live with that thought, everybody Wait. Does that mean there's little bugs in your now, let's not talk about that. Okay, sorry, um. Omar, yeah, all right, okay, sorry. You know it's so funny, like, I reached out to you. I'm like, you want to tell your story about glucagon. You're like, yes, but then you sent me this list. You're like, I'm a episode on my own. I was like, oh, okay, well, like

Tiffany 14:52
a recurring guest, seriously, because I actually did a full, like, write up, because I was just trying to, like, write down my whole history. And it was like five pages. As long. So you got a very shortened list of what truly is my show journey you're gonna be. You're

Scott Benner 15:05
gonna be like, somebody who just comes on every six months and like, Okay, where were we and this, alright. So then you go to, what was the next thing you

Tiffany 15:13
tried? I think we were just back on, back on Metformin at that point, because that was the so we, we did the experimenting, and then we had the Metformin, and then I had the episodes before, where I stopped taking the Metformin when they switched the dose. And I was actually at an amusement park one day and ended up in their like medical area, first aid area. I was testing my because I only had a meter at that point testing my blood sugar, and it was just reading high. So I think that meant, like, my blood sugar was over 500 the person in the first aid area just told me to drink a lot of water well. And I'm like, okay, so I did that, and it gradually came to a walking around in the amusement park. With the exercise eventually brought me down, I guess. But I'm actually questioning whether or not that may have been like DKA. Not sure.

Scott Benner 16:07
I mean, it's, you know, it depends on how long DKA can come on, very quickly. It could, actually can happen without enough insulin, even with a an in range blood sugar. So, right, which

Tiffany 16:18
I've learned from the podcast. Oh,

Scott Benner 16:20
sorry. I just, I just drop in these little things as we're talking. Do you think sometimes people are like, I've heard him say that before, and I was like, Yeah, but everybody hasn't heard me say it, so I'll slip that stuff in. Okay, so you're wandering around this park on just Metformin.

Tiffany 16:35
That's when I stopped taking there's like, a weak stretch of where I stopped taking

Scott Benner 16:40
it. You're like, I'm stopping this, and I'm riding a roller coaster. Roller coaster,

Tiffany 16:43
pretty much roller coaster. Indeed, me

Scott Benner 16:47
and my moist, gentle area are gonna go to the Six Flags. Jesus Christ. Do you feel crazy at this point? Like it's a number of years into it now, and this is just like, like, people really have to step back when they listen to this and recognize that the span of time and days in your life that go by with all this inconsistent information and unknown like outcomes that are happening all the time, like, does it just eventually get to you? Do you just think I'm just a sick person? I

Tiffany 17:14
never really felt that way. My husband was like, Okay, you suck. Like like you're always sick, and I'm like, You're just generalizing, I'm not always sick when you're in it you don't realize how long it truly is. But when we finally get to the end, and I look back like I'm feeling all the feels, because I am just pissed off at this point that people have literally twist my life for the last 10 years?

Scott Benner 17:43
Yeah, okay, it's a decade. It's into your husband's point. Like, it feels like you go to the store and there's like 50 boxes there, and you somehow grab the one that's missing apart, like there were so many girls like, how to get this one. But no, seriously, they, they. It's important to bring up, because I believe that while you're going through all this, sometimes the person going through it is the last one to really see it, and it does impact the people around you. And then, you know, finally, you have this reckoning where you understand fully what's happened to you. And I don't see I mean, you gotta have a really good attitude, not to feel like somebody stole something from you. You know, well,

Tiffany 18:24
you go through the range, like the stages of grief, almost for the years that you've lost rage, you know, you're sad, you're depressed, you're whatever, but then I am way too much of a take charge person. And obviously, you know my kids, they put everything into perspective and give you something to like. Well, I may have lost this time with you before, but we're going to make the best of everything now,

Scott Benner 18:49
I try to remember too, that all the things that I figure out about my health could likely help my kids one day, and then they won't have to waste that time. That makes me feel better about it. Sometimes, absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Tiffany 19:01
Or, and then any stories that we can share like this, part of the reason why I wanted to come on and share is that somebody listening somewhere, hopefully will think a little bit more about advocating for themselves to get what they need to get. Yeah, we're going

Scott Benner 19:15
to reduce moist genitals everywhere with this conversation today. Also, I think we're going to save some people's assets when you talk about your what happened with your glucagon. But okay, so anyway, we get through all this, this time and and you continue to live the way it goes. What gets you to the somebody saying, Hey, you have type one diabetes real quick.

Tiffany 19:37
I want to back up for a very quick story, because we we're not there yet. Oh, okay, we get to a point of where trulicity. So I start trulicity. That actually was very helpful. I was all. I also get to a point of where I'm like, Okay, I'm done with this. I felt like I had better control blood sugars while I was pregnant using a. Actual injectable insulin. So I basically bully my endo to give me insulin so I can just do it on my own. I do get much better control there, but I still end up having crazy lows again, still not fully understanding how insulin works. The big one for me, I think, was fat and protein and how that really affects insulin, because I would do all of my dosing up front and be like, What the hell just happened? Yeah, um, you'd crash. I would crash. I was like, Okay, so my husband sees the Dexcom Super Bowl commercial for the g6 really, with Joe Jonas. And he was like, You need to get one of those. And I said, Oh my gosh, that is exactly what I need, so that I can prove to my doctor that she has me on too much freaking insulin.

Scott Benner 20:50
Can I say something before you go on? Sure. When Dexcom put Joe, Jonas, no, Nick, Jonas, Nick, right. Nick, yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. Everyone's like, you don't know it's Nick. I'm like, I don't really when they put Nick Jonas in that, in that Super Bowl commercial, I heard so many people bitching, right? Spending all that money. That's why these things are so expensive. You don't have to do that. Blah, blah, blah. And this also came very much from the, I don't want to just say the Instagram crowd, but like, there's that age range. You know what I mean? When you're like, 26 you think you understand everything. Sorry for 26 year olds like you, you have big ideas about things, and sometimes you don't recognize there's other things you still haven't learned about life. And you make these big pronouncements. I saw a lot of these big pronouncements from people of a certain age. This is a waste of money. Blah, blah, blah. Like, first of all, a million dollars is a lot of money for a commercial. I don't actually know what Dexcom spent on it, but let me just say this, like, in the grand scheme of things, it's not that much money. So, like, you know, like, if they gave back, if they took the million and split it up amongst all of you, you'd all get about 46 cents to just calm down. It wouldn't make everything you know, 50% cheaper, nevertheless, that goddamn commercial saved Tiffany, you know, and how many other people who are like, you know? Just because you know about it doesn't mean everybody knows about it. And so you got to get out there in the public and show people, and that was, you know, a bold thing to do. It's so funny because, like, we complain and complain that diabetes companies don't do enough. They don't do enough. They don't do enough. And then one company is like, you know what? Let's reach down deep in our pocket and buy a Super Bowl ad. And they do it, and then people complain about that. I just love watching people complain nevertheless.

Tiffany 22:31
Well, I feel it's the human condition, right? People are not like content with life unless they're bitching about something, apparently,

Scott Benner 22:37
also a little bit of your Philly accent came out a minute ago. I appreciated that. Oh, yeah. Are you from here originally, or just Pennsylvania in general,

Tiffany 22:48
Pennsylvania in general? But it's funny because my older daughter, when she was in daycare, they're like, Do you have family in New Jersey? Your daughter has this accent, which is a perfect blend of like, Pennsylvania Dutch and New Jersey.

Scott Benner 23:02
Yeah, no kidding. My grandmother was Pennsylvania Dutch and she she spoke out of order. And I've never, yeah, I've never. I The best way I can never explain it to people is that if there was a cow on the other side of a fence, and she was on this side of the fence, and she had to throw hay to the cow. She'd say, throw the cow over the fence some hay.

Tiffany 23:24
Yeah, I think it's the, well, it's just like the bastardized German, because that's basically what Pennsylvania Dutch is, yeah. And it's just the order of their, like, adjectives and verbs, yeah. Anyway,

Scott Benner 23:33
I just heard a little bit of like you almost sounded like an actress who was told they were going to be in a movie that was set in eastern Pennsylvania. It was fantastic, nice. I'm so sorry. Anyway, the Super Bowl commercial, let's assume it's the year that the Eagles killed the New England Patriots and embarrassed Tom Brady, and then move on. So you saw that commercial, and then what happened?

Tiffany 23:55
So I reach out to my doctor, who has to do this like huge justification for my insurance company, because I'm type two, but we get that taken care of. And I'm like, Yes, finally, things are coming together. I have my insulin. I can micromanage the hell out of my diabetes now, because I'm a data junkie too. So now I'm like, I'm going to have all of this data. It's going to be great. Two months later I get pregnant. Well,

Scott Benner 24:23
so you were really managing your a 1c and your body loves being pregnant when your blood sugar is not high, apparently. So

Tiffany 24:28
apparently, but that kind of it like, I'm like, yay. This is super happy. And we it was planned, and we loved it, and it was fabulous, but it was going to basically with me proving my doctor wrong? Oh,

Scott Benner 24:42
you're like, but I, I really, I need this insulin. I wonder, insulin like, I need

Tiffany 24:47
to prove her wrong. I need to prove her wrong. So now we're, you know, riding the pregnancy wave yet again, crazy, crazy amounts of insulin. I do okay. For the most part, I do. It's total. Different ball game wearing a Dexcom when you're pregnant, versus just testing your blood sugar. And I'm like, wow, you go low. Like, a lot, like, especially when your older daughter's favorite meal is Fettuccine Alfredo.

Scott Benner 25:14
Yeah, it teaches you a lot being able to see your blood sugar like that in real time. I think, honestly, everybody would benefit from seeing their blood sugar a couple of times.

Tiffany 25:22
I think, like anybody who is diagnosed as diabetes should have a CGM, like, I just

Scott Benner 25:28
at no point did anyone say you have Hashimotos. That's an autoimmune issue. I wonder if you're type one. Not

Tiffany 25:34
a doctor, okay? And now I've seen, I've seen at least three different end those at the same practice. Now I

Scott Benner 25:40
just want to brag for a second if I talked to you, then I would have figured out you were type one in eight minutes. That's that in the beginning of the episode, I would have been like, wait, no, you probably have type one. Yeah. Okay, so

Tiffany 25:51
fast forward through the whole pregnancy again. Go off. Well, not that insulin needs reduce after my second daughter is born. She does almost try to kill me on the way out. So that was that was fun to grab onto something. What happened? Well, maybe because I was hemorrhaging. Oh,

Scott Benner 26:12
Mom, we should bring this kidney with

Tiffany 26:13
us. Yeah, like we need extra parts on the outside.

Scott Benner 26:18
I, by the way, don't know how the body works, if I just assume you can grab everything while you're in there, but go ahead. Who knows? I'm sure someone knows. I almost

Tiffany 26:25
pass out, you know, because they always try to give you the baby, like, right away, when, when they're first born, yeah? And yeah, it's all fun and great. And then you kind of have this superpower of where you don't feel pain. Yeah, not me. They put her on my chest, and I was like, yeah, no, not yet. No, no, I can't. I can't. Why felt myself flipping Okay, and this is valid, because it would later when we talk about Chivo, I was as close to feeling like I was gonna die when I was having her as I ever did. And I just heard a voice in my in my head, say, you can't give up. If you give up, you'll die,

Scott Benner 27:02
really, jeez, from the hemorrhaging so

Tiffany 27:05
well from the so my epidural didn't work. Oh, and I had, you know, the contractions for they they induced her, she wouldn't come out. They tried absolutely everything I was going through during COVID. So the only person there with me was my husband. So no, like, real, like, support. I mean, I love my husband, but like,

Scott Benner 27:27
Tiffany's like, he was done, yeah, right after he got me pregnant, I didn't really hear from him again. Didn't have a lot to do.

Tiffany 27:35
So I do love him dearly. They were to the point of where they were going to give me laughing gas, and then they're like, well, we can do this. But then I was like, I tell him. I was like, You need to get that doctor. Like, I'm ready. I'm ready to push. And he is like, no, no, you're not. She just said you're not ready. And I'm like, I'm telling you I'm ready because, like, unless you've physically had a child before, there's just your body just knows right when it's time. And she came back over, and I think I dilated from like seven to 10 inches in like five minutes. So that was real fun. But anyway, so. But that feeling, that feeling the voice in your head of like you cannot give up, you will die if you give up, was again, the first, the closest I ever felt like I to coming that I was gonna die. Second would have been the G, VO, guess. But anyway, after I have her, my blood sugars, believe it or not, are terrible. I was riding in like the 250 to 300 Oh, I don't know, for probably about three months. It pushed my a 1c to a 9.4 and there was no like, I would ask. I'd be like, what is happening? Like, why is this so high I also had crazy, terrible inflammation in my hands, to the point of where I was even having trouble picking my baby up. The answer for that was steroid injections. People are

Scott Benner 28:56
like, you seem like you're hard on doctors on I'm like, well, have someone come on and tell a story that doesn't make it sound like nobody's doing it. Nobody's doing anything. What I wonder is, I see this happen sometimes in complex medical situations, what yours is because, like, the timing around the pregnancy confuses people. You know, the the oral medication seems to help, which confuses people. I get all that, but sometimes I think it's because they know the whole story that they're confused. Like, if you just went to a new person on that day and said, You know, I was needed insulin. I got pregnant, the pregnancy ended, and I just need, like, my blood sugars are 250 constantly. By the way, I have Hashimotos. A new set of eyes would have went, Well, yeah, it sounds like you sounds like you have type one diabetes.

Tiffany 29:43
But okay, so now, now you'll find out how I got there. Okay, daughter number one decides that, like, hey, let's, let's, let's be a Girl Scout. So we sign up and I am again, super type A I become. The cookie mom, so that means I'm going to be in charge of all of the ordering of the Girl Scout cookies for our entire troupe. So through this, I run into another girl scout mom who essentially has the cookie cupboard at her house. So every week my troop says, Hey, this is how many more cookies we need. I go to the cookie cupboard to get the cookies for our troop. It's funny because just in normal, like 15 minute conversation picking up cookies each week, we get into a conversation about thyroid, and she tells me that her daughter was recently diagnosed as type one. So this conversation is happening in April of 2022 so her daughter was diagnosed in October, and she's like, Oh, I listened to this podcast while I walk. It's great. So she starts telling me about the podcast, and then the next week, she's walking by dropping off some cookies for me, and she says, Hey, I'm going to send you a link. There's this article about Lada, so the latent auto immune, diabetes and adults. And she's like, I think, I think that you may actually be type one. I read the article. And she's like, these are the two blood tests that you need to ask your daughter for or your doctor for? Yeah, so I send a message in the portal to my doctor, and at this point, I'm like, I need a new I know that I need a new doctor, but I like, I also need my prescriptions at this point. So I was just like, whatever. She can still send in my prescriptions, and I try to message through the portal, because their office just sucks. I mean, you can call they lose messages. It's a complete show. So I message to the portal and say, Hey, I'm wondering if I might not have Lata, can we run these two blood tests for my next appointment? And she says, Yeah, sure. So she sends them. We're on vacation in July. I look at the blood test, because I do my blood work right before we go on vacation, I'm looking at the results in the portal, and I immediately Google, right? Because I'm going to Google diagnosed myself to see, like, what the ranges were. And I'm like, Oh, holy, I have type one, yeah. And it was kind of like, it was almost like a relief, in a way, sure, um, little did I know what I was getting myself into, but I was like, at least I might have some sort of an answer. Now,

Scott Benner 32:29
you know, there's a there's a hint in your story, when the trulicity helps, that you might be type one as well, because you're seeing now, a lot of type ones on glps need significantly less insulin, and if you were at the beginning of a lot of diagnosis and GLP suddenly brought your needs down, that doesn't surprise me at all. I did you hear Jim's episode like last week?

Tiffany 32:51
I didn't hear his yet, but I did listen to the first Dr Blevins episode. Yeah,

Scott Benner 32:56
Jim is a 58 year old type one who most likely has either a really slow onset, or moody or something like that. But nevertheless, he was on insulin for six years. Like, heavy use of insulin for six years, he started using Manjaro, and he's, like, completely off of insulin right now. And like, that's insane. But that's when, when you said the trulicity was helpful. I thought, Oh, that makes sense to me. Okay, so you dr, Google yourself up. By the way, you've definitely called this episode, probably the cookie mom, or cookie mom. Cookie mom would have really helped if you would have said the cookies were moist. But I don't want to pin you down on the details, because then we would have had some double entendre going, which would have really been lovely, but nevertheless, but, but so you figure this out for yourself. Does the doctor bite or does she push back? So

Tiffany 33:44
she argued with me. I have my my doctor's appointment, interestingly enough, the same day I have an ablation done because your heart so no, my uterus. Oh,

Scott Benner 33:57
uterine. Okay, sorry that I think my father in law just had to have an ablation, which made me think harder. You got the lady parts lasered?

Tiffany 34:04
I did get the lady parts lasered after my cycles started up. After my my second daughter, I had a crazy, crazy periods with super crazy bleeding that I was like, I thought I was dying at one point. I was like, I'm like, there is no possible way this much blood should be coming out of me.

Scott Benner 34:28
So is there anybody who wants to be a girl after they hear stuff like this?

Tiffany 34:32
No, no, just turn away. So I'm like, still hopped up on some of the drugs that they give you for the ablation process. I have a video appointment with my endo at this point, and she gets through the entire appointment and she's like, okay. And I was like, Well, hold on a second. What about those, like, blood tests that we did? And she's like, stuttering, you know, at this point, you know, she just didn't even look at the the results and forgot that she added them to my. Blood work. And then she's like, she actually got an attitude with me. And she's like, Well, what do you want? Do you want to go on an insulin

Scott Benner 35:05
pump? I would like you to just like, be reasonably competent, if you don't mind, do your damn job. That's what I would like. Oh, how much of college did you drink your way through? Lady? My

Tiffany 35:21
gosh, we'll see you get degrees, right? Oh my god. There are people that suck in every profession, sure. So I get off the phone and I am, like, livid, and My poor husband is getting an earful because I'm just venting, like I don't even know what to do with the rage that is currently inside me. 20 minutes later, I get a phone call. The doctors calling me back, apologizing to me, Oh, finally, stuttering, like, stammer like, I just don't know. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't realize you had all of this blood work done at the same time. I'm like, Oh, really, because I can see it in the portal, and it's time stamps, they're all the same day. Like, seriously,

Scott Benner 36:00
I forgot to do my job, but I just did it. Now, when I hear up the phone and we gotta get you some insulin,

Tiffany 36:07
right? And I'm still on, I'm on injectable insulin

Scott Benner 36:11
at this point. So anyway,

Tiffany 36:15
she's like, Oh, well, do you do you want to go on a pump? She goes, Do you have any idea what pump you want? And of course, you know, because I diagnosed myself two weeks ago, I see all about Omnipod five that's coming out. And I'm like, Yeah, I want this one because my my toddler. I love her, but she is basically trying to kill me every other day. The last thing I need is tubes for her to yank one and pull. So I'm like, Yes, I would like a tubeless pump. And I was lucky enough to kind of beat the rush and got my starter kit, like, right as it hit mass market. Oh,

Scott Benner 36:55
wow, you hit that kind of sweet spot in there. That's interesting. Good. Yeah, well, I mean, the kid grabbed onto your fallopian tube. She was definitely gonna pull out tubing. So pull

Tiffany 37:02
up tubing. She was definitely gonna pull off I gotcha. So obviously I get with an educator who, like, is all excited about me. I was only like the second person she was gonna be training on Omnipod five. But the problem is, is that my settings that the doctor was going to put in there were based on crap to begin with. So the educator actually sat down with me to help me try to figure out a starting point for settings to put in that were way different than what the doctor was going to suggest. So but it's still a roller coaster, because, like, anytime you start that it's like, it's just a starting point, and then you have to basically correct like the hell out of it, so that it learns. Okay, we need, we need to be better. So basically, at that point, right? So I was at a 9.4 a, 1c, once I get the insulin pump, the Omnipod five and obsessively listen to the podcast, I'm like cooking dinner, like driving anywhere, like not listening to my family when they're talking to me, just like trying to ingest as much as I possibly can of the podcast. I By October, have my a 1c down to a 6.00 my gosh.

Scott Benner 38:14
Oh, I wish you wouldn't have gotten the ablation, because I think the next kid could have been named after me, but that's okay. I want you to be happy, I guess, Wow, good for you. Hey, that's wonderful. Must have felt like such an accomplishment, too, after all that time.

Tiffany 38:27
Well, it was. And then I'm like, I'm her star patient. But I go through some other hurdles, right? Because at this point, like, I am just starting an insulin pump, so and I have to switch the vials. I don't have enough of a supply. So when one starts to go sideways, I'm kind of screwed. So I ended up on more than one phone call with the office manager at my office or at my practice, yelling at them, basically saying I because nobody told me how to what do I do when I don't have a pump or in the event of an equipment failure? Because why would we have sick day protocol? Why would we teach people what to do if their pump doesn't work or if they run out of supplies? Why would we do any of that? It would like put them out of business? I guess I don't know, but

Scott Benner 39:18
we don't want to let you know how to take care of yourself, because then you wouldn't have to call here and then, oh, call here, and then we couldn't give you no help. Then you come in and give us $40 this is really the goal. We need the $40 and we need

Tiffany 39:29
the $40 Yes, yeah. So, oh, and I also yelled at a pharmacist too, because they were short staffed, and because it was during, like all the COVID injections and everything. And they're making the pharmacists, which I do get, they are making pharmacists do way more than what they had the capacity to do, sure, um, but somebody screwed up my insulin vial, like prescription, and they gave me a partial at one point, and when I went back in for more, they were like, no, no, we already, we already gave that to you. And I'm like, Well, no, no, you didn't. And I need insulin. And I think I well, I made the pharmacist cry when I was like, it's not like, this is in Viagra, and I'm trying to get a hard on. I need it to live. Needless to say, I walked out of the pharmacy with my insulin, and that pharmacy is no longer in business. I'd like to think that I had a little bit to do with that. Maybe I did, maybe I did a pharmacy

Scott Benner 40:26
went out of business. Yes, oh, when all their employees had to go get, like, long term therapy because of you, is that what they were like, we have to, we're admitting a lot of our staff for psychiatric care, so we can't keep going. Was it just bad? They just didn't do a good job? Do a good job? Well, no,

Tiffany 40:44
and they didn't, and then they were so rude. I mean, it was you would have to wait almost an hour in line just to pick up your prescription, and you couldn't call because they wouldn't pick up the damn phone. And, like, I guarantee you, they had this, like, security cam footage, like photo of me hanging up behind the counter that was just like, give this woman whatever she needs. You're probably

Scott Benner 41:04
serious. You're probably on a t shirt that they handed out at the Christmas party. Well, listen, you're frustrated, right? And then there's all that, I mean, the COVID anxiety on top of everything else. And you're just figuring this thing out. Also, I would listen, if we're going to be realistic, you spent almost a decade trying to get an answer for yourself, and now you have it, and you look up and the next person in line is giving you a problem. Yes, it feels like it's never going

Tiffany 41:30
to stop, and I'm done at this point, because I'm like, I am not going to mess with anybody getting in my way anymore.

Scott Benner 41:39
How long ago was this? So this

Tiffany 41:42
was probably the end of 2023

Scott Benner 41:48
okay, so pretty recently. Hey, listen before, before we move on, because we're going to jump ahead to your to your low blood sugar and something. But I just want to let you know that at the end of my notes here about when you asked about, when we were talking about the other drugs, it says, one of the tips it gives to avoid, to avoid a yeast infection, is to avoid tight fitting underwear and to opt for breathable fabrics, like cotton. So I understand the breathable fabrics part, but between you and me, I've never worn underwear as a lady. What is loose fitting underwear if

Tiffany 42:19
you're a woman? I guess I'm supposed to identify as a guy and wear boxers. I mean,

Scott Benner 42:23
because, like, I get guys wear boxers sometimes. And so when you say loose fitting to a guy, it means that it's, like, not hammocking your your business, right? Like, but when you got lady business, isn't it all sort of pretty, like, streamline, yeah.

Tiffany 42:37
Like, there really is only one kind. I mean, even the boy shorts for women are, they're

Scott Benner 42:43
still tugging the junk.

Yes, but, like, yeah, like, everywhere that women's underwear is touching you, everywhere that women's underwear has fabric is touching you, right? Yes. What the hell would loose fitting women's underwear be? I don't know. That's all I got here for you on that one. I just wanted to break up the story so that we could go to something else and let everybody and let everybody think for a minute. What does it mean? Loose fitting women's underwear? I don't understand at all, because it just sounds like, like baggy in the crotch, right? Yeah, well, that's what it would have to be,

Tiffany 43:15
all right, maybe, maybe I should Google that later. Maybe that's another Google.

Scott Benner 43:20
I have to tell you, I thought for a minute when you were coming on today, like I was like, maybe I'll ask chief oak if they want to sponsor this episode, because it's going to be how I realize. I'm not going to be answering. I'm not going to be asking them that at all. They won't be using this episode on their website. That's for certain.

Tiffany 43:37
I warned you. I do believe I warned you. That's fine. Don't worry about it. So super tight control right at this point, I'm basically just using my my doctor as a drug mule for the prescriptions. It's great. I'm using the podcast. I've listened to the Pro Tip series defining diabetes holy variables was like a goddamn life changer. Like, who knew that your insulin needs can increase, like, three times the actual amount that you need usually use, you know, during your period, like we

Scott Benner 44:06
just talked about adding to that series recently, to the variable series. So you're out there in Pennsylvania, middle of Pennsylvania, I'm your doctor. Through a podcast, me and Jenny, is that basically how you're managing this?

Tiffany 44:20
Yes, a Girl Scout, cookie. Mom diagnosed me, and you're my doctor.

Scott Benner 44:25
Yeah, there you go. Life's fair,

Tiffany 44:29
and, oh, you're a nice little disclaimer. Hey, don't try any of this stuff. I'm not actually a medical professional. I was like, Well, I'm obviously he knows what he's talking about, so we'll give it a try.

Scott Benner 44:39
Obviously, it happened. How could this go wrong? He seems very worried about what loose underwear means, but I'm gonna listen to him about this Pre Bolus IDs. God, that's ridiculous. I'm never gonna stop being bowled over that this podcast is popular because it. Didn't need to be. You

Tiffany 45:02
know what I mean? It shouldn't need right? It's this should all be stuff that is given. This should be basic information, yeah, given to patients when they're diagnosed. But it's not. And that's the problem. Like there are good doctors, but most of them suck. Maybe in another episode, we talk about how a rabbit in my backyard led me to a new end though, who I absolutely love and she, she loves me, and we're great. We have a wonderful relationship.

Scott Benner 45:28
Hey, rabbit in your backyard. That's not a euphemism, is it? No, okay, there was actually a rabbit in your story.

Tiffany 45:34
Okay? Yes, it's a rabbit. Dogs are involved. There's three er trips. Yeah, it's fun. I

Scott Benner 45:41
once heard a lady go, whoo. I got a rabbit in my backyard, and I didn't know if it meant the same thing.

Tiffany 45:47
That's like, wow. So anyway, I learn through the podcast basically everything I know variables, the timing and effective insulin, the fact that I should be walking around with a rescue pen wherever I go, because, you know, even if you are super well controlled, still can happen, yeah, um, leads me to my Gmail story that we've been chatting for an hour.

Scott Benner 46:15
So let me just say this up front. I want to be I want to all of this credit to fall right on me. You are. You are carrying je vo KIPO pen because of the Juicebox Podcast, 1,000% okay. What happened? So I get to work,

Tiffany 46:32
normal day at work, right? I sit down, I'm turning on my monitors, and, like, everything kind of looks a little bit dark in my office, which I'm like, Oh well, the sun's shining in so, you know how you get, like, that sun blindness, of where it kind of messes with your vision for a little bit. And I'm like, oh, we'll just, you know, chit chat on the phone here a little bit as I start my day, until the sun goes down enough for me to be able to see my monitors, because I was too lazy to get up and pull down the shades, having a little bit of trouble concentrating because I'm on the phone, talking to somebody, but at the same time working, which I, you know, I multitask, but I'm I'm having trouble doing even one of those things. And I'm like, What the heck is going on? And then I start to see the, like, the bigger spots floating around in my vision. And I'm like, Oh no, that can't be right. What's going on? Look down at my Dexcom at this point. I'm like, it's 104 double arrow down. The 104 is kind of irrelevant, because I would expect to be right around that amount. But I'm like, the double arrow down makes zero sense. I have only dosed for my coffee at this point, which I usually throw an extra five carbs because the coffee hits me, even if it's black. So I'm like, but I didn't. It's not like I ran up a flight of steps or, you know, did anything. I literally sat down in my chair at work few minutes later, drinking my coffee, going on about my day

Scott Benner 47:57
as you would have any other day, as I would have any

Tiffany 48:01
other day. Okay? And then I really start to just like, the vision is just going more and more. And I'm like, holy crap. I look back again, not even like, I don't know, 510, minutes later, now I'm at 64

Scott Benner 48:17
straight arrow down, and

Tiffany 48:19
I'm like, Uh oh. So I text my husband, and I'm like, because he follows me on Dexcom. And I was like, there's some crazy going on with my blood sugar. Just wanted to give you a heads up. I'm working on it. So this is just in a text, right? Yeah. So I'm still on, like, the phone with my friend at the point at this time, who knows I'm type one, and she's forever been my like, don't die, buddy, right? She knows she could tell by the color of my cheeks if my blood sugar is low. So I test my blood sugar. Because I was like, Is my is my Dexcom really that off? Like, I don't think it's off. I mean, the arrows, right, but the number seems off for the symptoms that I'm having, because I am also hypo one aware.

Scott Benner 48:57
Oh, okay, you don't feel lows at all. I don't feel lows, okay.

Tiffany 49:03
Spots usually are what I see, and by the time I see those spots, I'm in the 50s.

Scott Benner 49:09
Okay, the two arrows didn't scare you, or were you already kind of out of it, but

Tiffany 49:15
it all happened so quick because it was rapidly falling. So I pull out my Contour Next One, which I also

Scott Benner 49:24
got through the juice box contour, next com, slash juice box. Go ahead. So

Tiffany 49:28
then I test, and I'm 36

Scott Benner 49:31
Oh, and did you and are you out of it at that point, or are you cognizant enough to go I'm in trouble?

Tiffany 49:37
No, I knew I was in trouble, but it still didn't really register, because I'm stubborn, and I like to not it was in denial, basically. So I tell my friend, I was like, Okay, I need to call my husband quick. Like, I

Scott Benner 49:51
this is, this is bad. Do you know why? Why did you think to call somebody? Like, why not eat something? Because

Tiffany 49:57
I was too nauseous. So. Okay, there were like 9 million thoughts going through my head at the same time. Yeah? Because my brain was still fully functional, I just didn't have my faculties. Yeah, that's what I'm

Scott Benner 50:08
trying to I want to make sure you get that across to people, like, it's not like you were you're altered. You just kind of half don't realize it. So you're just, you're following whatever your common sense at that moment is telling you, is that

Tiffany 50:20
right? So the very first thing I do when I see I'm 36 is I pick up my omnipot controller and I'm like, Oh, I have four units on board. And I was super nauseous by that point, because I had dropped so quickly that I knew, like, juice is like, my go to I knew there was no way I was keeping that juice down. So at this point, I know that I have to use my G VO, which obviously I've never used before. And I'm like, I really hope this works.

Scott Benner 50:51
This guy on the podcast talk me into getting this and let's, let's see what happens.

Tiffany 50:55
Yep, now my life is literally in his hands. I

Scott Benner 50:59
only live if a boy named Scott who knew how to buy a microphone was right about something called glucagon, let's go,

Tiffany 51:07
dude. I'm not even kidding, because it kind of gets worse, because so I hang up with my friend to call my husband quick, which seemed like it took me 30 minutes to do, because I am focusing every ounce of my being like I've had an iPhone for years, right? And I'm like, and they're both in my favorites, and I'm like, Okay, hang up for us. I had two buttons to push, and it was all I could do to push those two buttons. And what finally kind of snaps me into action is my husband yells to somebody that he works with, like, Dude, you just gotta hold on a minute. My wife's on the phone. She's crying, which I like never do. She's having a diabetic emergency, and then, for whatever reason, that is what snaps me into like, Oh, this is really happening. So you

Scott Benner 51:57
contacted him without really even knowing, you push the buttons, and then you kind of like, come to to him, yelling, is that the idea?

Tiffany 52:03
Well, no, no, he's, he's, I'm still conscious at this point, yeah. But

Scott Benner 52:08
I mean, like, I know you're conscious, but like, your focus, your understanding, does it, is it fading in and out? Or do you not even remember? Yes, it is. Yeah,

Tiffany 52:16
because, and I didn't even realize to me it wasn't at the time. But like my friend told me, after the fact, she goes, you were, I was asking you if you had juice, and you were never even answering me, because I don't ever remember hearing her, because I am, while I never pass out, I am, like, essentially in and out of consciousness. Yeah, I managed to call her back. But while I was on the phone with my husband, she had called somebody that I work with who is physically in the building, because we're working a hybrid work schedule, so that building is very like, sparsely populated on any given day. So luckily, she has somebody come to my office and she's like, What do you need now? Jivo, I mean, it has picture instructions on the actual package, right? I have told people how to use this thing, no fewer than 100 times. Because, like, anytime we're out or doing something active, like, I will actually show people, like, if it's a different, you know, group of people be like, hey, you know, if I drop over, like, here's this thing super easy to do, like, an EpiPen. Like, just, like, follow the instructions. But for the love of God, just don't take my pants

Scott Benner 53:21
off. And if you want to yell clear for fun, you can, but it's not necessary. Well,

Tiffany 53:25
because the package has like the little dude, like he's naked, you do not need to strip all of my clothes off.

Scott Benner 53:32
Just find a little skin. Please. Doesn't need to be all of it. I have to stop you and apologize. When your friend said I was asking you to drink juice and you weren't responding. I started to cry, because made me think of when this happened to Arden, and I was on the phone with her, and I there was this moment when she stopped responding, and I knew what was happening, and it's the, maybe the worst feeling I've ever had in my life. So it just rushed over me, sorry

Tiffany 53:58
from from a parent's perspective, because that is one thing, like, out of anybody, like, I am so glad that this was me and not my kids, because I do not know that I would be able to handle my kids right having a diagnosis, because it's just, it's a different world. It

Scott Benner 54:13
sounds like you'd be okay. You've been through enough stuff, but I'm sorry, go ahead. Probably

Tiffany 54:19
it's okay. So then, so, so I have a friend on the phone. I have a friend in my office. I am able to tear the package open and pull the pen out, but then I look at the friend who's physically with me, and I say, now what? Because I was, I was stopping. I was I, I had to be, like, literal single digit minutes away from passing out. Yeah. So we do the injection. It burns a little, not terrible. But then then we're sitting there, because now I'm like, so other friend on the phone is googling the out of this, which is like, how long is this gonna take to work? What do we need? What do we need? To do, and at this point, like, because I also need to replace my pod at some point. But I'm just like, No, no, I have to leave the pod on because, like, I don't know how high I might shoot up after I take this. Like, all unknowns, right? But I would say within 15 minutes, I think I was up from now, and my Dexcom never alarmed, never alerted. I didn't get the the fall rate alarm, because it just, I think it just happened so quickly that it didn't even, like, give the alerts. So I think maybe within like, 15 minutes, I might have been around, like, 70, okay? And then I was like, once I hit 70, I was like, Okay, we're we're turning around. This is good, right? But then, like, after the fact, I'm on the phone with my friend, and she's like, how do we do this? Like, better next time, what do we do? What do I need to react faster? You need to do this. So we were just doing this whole, like, debrief of what just happened. Because I will also say, until I listened to the podcast, I look back, like, over the years of using insulin, and I actually realized how many times I was very close to a seizure and or dying, you just didn't know about it, and I just didn't even know. And this time, it wasn't quite as bad as when I was in the hospital with my daughter, but this was a very close second to if somebody would not like if I wouldn't have had G, VO, and people there with me to help me with that, I pass out. Nobody even comes looking for me for at least 30 minutes, and I die. Yeah, on the floor in my office. Nobody wants to die at work, that's for sure. So the biggest message in like all of this, that I would have for people is it does not matter how much you think you have your together, how good your a 1c is, how good your control is. It can happen to anybody.

Scott Benner 57:00
No, it just, and it doesn't have to be a lot of insulin. It doesn't have you could just, you can just have these random confluence of events, and the next thing you know, you're in a situation that you have to act in. And, you know, it's funny, because I would bet that if this happened to you again, exactly this way spots in your eyes too nauseous to eat, you'd go right to the gluco next time I imagine, Yep, yeah, yeah,

Tiffany 57:28
because that was my I was kind of not seeing what was happening. But yeah, from the second I get those spots, like, because that's the scary part of being, you know, hypo and aware, not knowing or feeling those lows, is the second that you have one that you do notice you need to act immediately. You're farther

Scott Benner 57:47
gone than you think you are at that point. Yes,

Tiffany 57:49
yeah. And depending on how quickly, like, I've had that happen in the past, but I've been able to, you know, juice or, you know, fast fasting carbs my way out of it. It's

Scott Benner 57:58
interesting too to watch you go to, like, the steps, like, like, I'll call my husband so he doesn't worry which you look back on now, and you're like, that wasn't important to do. And, you know, just, I think it was

Tiffany 58:10
because it's like, him having the reaction that he did is what kind of snaps me, yeah? Like, back awake.

Scott Benner 58:15
Oh yeah. That definitely got you lucky, having, yeah, yeah. Boy, isn't it crazy? Like, you can like Monday morning quarterback this stuff to death, if you want, but it's just, it's going to be different for everybody. The situations are going to be different. You know, if you would have decided on that coffee 20 minutes before you got into work, you could have been in the parking lot, in your car while this was happening,

Tiffany 58:36
or driving, yeah, on the road, right on my way to work, yeah. So over a large body of water,

Scott Benner 58:41
Lake Erie, not quite No, not that big. Wait, Erie, Pennsylvania is not where Lake Erie is, is it? Yeah, it would make sense, though. Erie,

Tiffany 58:51
Erie is like borders, Lake Erie and that, but that's in the north, no, western part of the state. That's

Scott Benner 58:59
neither here nor there. Okay, so then I have a question the next day. Well, first of all, do you go back to work or do you go home

Tiffany 59:07
now I stay there and finish my day, because if I'm gonna take off work, I want it to be for something fun. That's

Scott Benner 59:14
how you know you got a good employee, right there. You're like, yeah, I almost died, but things are good. Now, let's get back to it. Jeez. I hope my boss listens to this podcast. Well, yeah, no kidding, it's worth a raise, I think, or at least a shout out at an event or something. The rest of you were hiding in the bathroom. I know you're hiding in there. This lady just almost had a seizure and she's still working. Next Day is the next day of work day. Uh,

Tiffany 59:41
next day is a work day. Did you bullish for your coffee? I do Bolus for my coffee. And why? Tell people why you did? Because my sugar is going to go high if I don't. Okay, good. But do

Scott Benner 59:51
you have any idea what happened that day for that, that low blood sugar incident? Do you have any idea? Like, in hindsight, I

Tiffany 59:57
think it's a combination. Um. It was iced coffee and not hot coffee, which I tend to sip, like, slower, or like the hot coffee, you know, you got to drink it before it gets cold, so you you tend to drink it faster. And my pump was on the last day, like, like, already expired. So I'm in the eight hour bonus window at this point. And they're from swimming and everything over the weekend, I think there was some condensation in the window, and just kind of like pod placement of where my cannula may or may not have bounced out a few times. I think there was a little bit of extra insulin in the window, and when I Bolus for my coffee, it leaked in.

Scott Benner 1:00:38
That seems less likely, but I like the other thing about the drinking pace, because you may definitely the pace, yeah, because you have it worked out. I put the insulin in. I drink the coffee like this. The coffee hits me hard. It battles with the insulin. I stay nice and stable, and then you put the insulin in. Basically didn't consume the coffee the same way. The insulin got ahead of you. Because I do think it's possible that 1042 down, that goes to the 64 one down, but it's not reading fast enough, like maybe that is a little bit of the coffee trying to help but being overwhelmed by the Bolus, if that makes sense, Yep, yeah. Otherwise, man, that's scary. Wow. And then, then, how do I end up knowing about this? So

Tiffany 1:01:23
I immediately want to go out to the Facebook page, because that's like, these are my people, right? Anytime I'm panicked or I have something that, like, I don't know, like, I don't know how to do something in this in this area, or if I have a question, it's like, you go to the group, you search other posts, or you just do a post and say, Hey, has anybody had experience with this? Because doctors at this point can doctor you. To a point, the people who live with this disease in and out every day are going to be a better resource than anybody. So I'm like, dude, like, this is crazy, but I feel this need to post this story for people, because I believe that anyone who's using insulin should have a G, VO or or another equivalent to rescue them in a situation like this. So I just want to share, get the word out. You seen my post and then said, Hey, do you want to share your story? And I'm like, Sure, let's do it. Cool.

Scott Benner 1:02:23
Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you sharing in there, because over and over again, I'm stunned by how few people understand about the reality of a very low blood sugar that they don't understand about glucagon. They don't know that they should be carrying it with them, that they should be telling people around them how to use it, like all of that stuff is just super important. I know people don't want to be bummed out. They don't want to worry about things, but this is just being ready in case. And so worst thing that happens is you never use the information

Tiffany 1:02:54
right? And it's better to have the tool that you need and not need it than to need it and not have it, because the alternative is not bright and sunny.

Scott Benner 1:03:04
I think the happiest moment of any time you know, quarterly, probably around here, is when you throw away an unused Jibo type event, when you go

Tiffany 1:03:16
about to do because luckily that one didn't expire, but it's set to very soon. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:03:23
when I look at them, well, all right, this is expired. Now we have a new one that came in. I and you take that old one and you throw it away, and you think, like, Wow, great. Glad to have had it. Even happier I didn't use it, glad I didn't need it, yeah, yeah, yeah. Best thing you'll throw in the trash ever. I do. Also sometimes mess with them and test on on things, so I can, like, see how it works and stuff. But

Tiffany 1:03:44
well, we were definitely, we were gearing up to it. We were even talking about it. It's like, I would have one that my friend, my don't die, buddy, was going to be able to she's like, I just want to, I want to play with a stabby pen when it expires.

Scott Benner 1:03:56
Let me see it. Yeah. Well, it's a great idea. You inject it into a banana or something like that. So you can see how it works, and it'll it takes away a lot of the fear for somebody who, I mean, even you right, like, yeah, it comes in this package. You never opened the package before. It's in the package. So you open it up and you're like, oh, is this what? This is? Okay. Here we go. How

Tiffany 1:04:16
do I do it? Okay? And knowing that it's not going to, like, shoot me through the roof right after too, like, because that was a fear too. But, I mean, obviously the low was more of a concern than the high at the time. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:27
it's actually interesting. I wonder how low you were going to get, because, I mean, it's a real indication that you were probably going to have a significant problem if the glucagon never made you higher than 70 after that. Well,

Tiffany 1:04:39
I did go higher after that. So I think, I think I capped out around 150

Scott Benner 1:04:42
that's still very reasonable. I think, you know, wow, yeah, did you at any point yell, please don't pull my pants off. I'm wearing loose underwear. I don't

Tiffany 1:04:53
I No, because we still don't know what loose underwear is. No

Scott Benner 1:04:57
lady in the history of the world wearing loose underwear on purpose. I just want to say that now this is my opinion. I'm not a woman, but I'm jumping to this conclusion very quickly. I would assume, if your underwear was loose, as a lady, you'd think to yourself, I need to replace my underwear.

Tiffany 1:05:11
Well, I would imagine, yeah, like, holy cow, I lost some weight.

Scott Benner 1:05:15
What happened? My god, I'm swimming in these things. Or, Oh, my

Tiffany 1:05:19
God, I've had the same underwear for 17 years. It's time for a new pair. Is

Scott Benner 1:05:24
there anything better, Tiffany, than throwing out old underwear? It's one of my favorite things. I don't know it's one of my favorite things. Yeah, I love it.

Tiffany 1:05:31
I do enjoy throwing out holy socks. Do you

Scott Benner 1:05:35
Yeah? Underwear? Like, every once in a while I have such a poor person's attitude because I grew up like, so broke, like, my wife will be like, what? What's going on? Why are you so happy? I said I bought three new packs of underwear, and I act like I've like, like, I'm Rockefeller, yeah, I mean, like, I'm like, I've bought three new packs of underwear, and I'm gonna throw away the equivalent amount of old underwear today. I'm living like, Wow, you

Tiffany 1:05:58
are. And it wasn't even a birthday present. No Christmas present,

Scott Benner 1:06:01
no, no, no. Just treat myself. Just treating myself. I swear to God, I don't know what's wrong with me. I never feel more accomplished than when I

Tiffany 1:06:09
do that. You're like, I saved a life. Today, I'm gonna go buy some new underwear and get myself

Scott Benner 1:06:13
a new one. My God, so, um, yeah, go ahead and say that out loud for people one time. Go ahead. Did I save your life?

Tiffany 1:06:19
You that You saved my life, absolutely

Scott Benner 1:06:22
with a podcast, a podcast ridiculous, saved my life, yeah, how about that? I'll be damn well. And you came on here and told the story very well. I appreciate it. You're very good at this. Actually. You ever been on a podcast before? Never? No, you did a good job. Awesome. Yeah. And tell me something now, if I had you back on one day, we could talk for another hour about something completely different. No problem. Well, absolutely, your note was, like, fantastic. Like, every once in a while I get an email and it basically starts Four score and seven years ago.

Tiffany 1:06:58
No, well, I can't I give you highlights. I can't give you all of the it's like a preview, right?

Scott Benner 1:07:04
Yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah, that's really wonderful. So I was

Tiffany 1:07:07
at my endo yesterday, and we actually are discussing trying to get me approved for either man Giro or zbound, so I may have more to discuss. Okay,

Scott Benner 1:07:20
excellent. So based on how did your doctor ask for it? Well, I asked for it, okay, because

Tiffany 1:07:29
I still have weight to lose because I start the insulin pump, and I'm probably going through a pod every other day for the massive amounts of insulin I'm using. I do lose weight over time. We actually tried, I tried ozembic. Got terribly, terribly sick on ozempic as another means to, like, try to lose this extra weight that insulin has so wonderfully helped me gain. We tried phentermine pills and that, I think, I lost close to 40 pounds since,

Scott Benner 1:08:03
since October. That's half of fentan, right?

Tiffany 1:08:08
Really, sure, is that right? Meeting. Isn't that a young Yeah, is it like a dietary supplement? It's an

Scott Benner 1:08:13
appetite suppressant. But how does it work? But it's not

Tiffany 1:08:16
that part of it. I don't believe, because I because when she it's, it's usually prescribed with an appetite suppressant. But I didn't need the appetite suppressant problem because, if anything, I have like, an anti food problem. Because of having to go through years of feeding insulin, the last thing I want to do is eat like I'm I do not have the like the food voice.

Scott Benner 1:08:41
Oh, interesting people have, but this is a short term use thing is that correct? You're not going to use it for long, okay, correct, okay, because I'm just reading, I allowed my chat GPT overlord to talk to me, says, tells me about the mechanism of action, similar to an amphetamine, actually stimulates the release of neurotransmitters like neuroepferin in the brain and which reduce hunger and help control appetite. But you don't have that problem usage, short term use indicated for a few weeks as part of a comprehensive weight loss plan that includes diet, exercise, behavior modifications, long term effectiveness and safety have not been established. Okay? Yeah,

Tiffany 1:09:19
definitely not long term. So I'm looking to get off of that at this point, right? So that's when I so my husband, who I diagnosed with the help of the podcast as type two diabetes. No kidding, currently on benjaro, so I ask about and knowing about your weight loss journey using zbound, I had inquired with her, like, hey, like, what do we think might happen if I try that? Because my history with GLP ones is usually gastro is just totally outweighs the benefits, because I get terribly sick, but we're going to give it a try if. You can get it approved.

Scott Benner 1:10:01
Oh, good for you. I hope you have, I hope you see a significant reduction in the insulin you need, and that it helps you with how much more weight do you feel like you need to lose?

Tiffany 1:10:09
I'd be probably happy with, I mean, according to a BMI scale, I probably need to lose another 60. I'd be happy with, like another like 30.

Scott Benner 1:10:20
I look at myself now, and I'm like, I'm gonna go with when I look right, like I stopped worrying about the number, almost completely right.

Tiffany 1:10:28
I need to because, and I'm very like, I'm proportionate. I carry my weight very well. People would not think that I weigh what I weigh, yeah, so it's less of that and more of just being healthy, because once I finally got the right diagnosis, once I got my a 1c down,

Speaker 1 1:10:44
I feel 10 years younger, like I feel so

Tiffany 1:10:48
different. So I went from, like, changing a pod every other day to I wear almost every single pod unless it like it's unless I'm sick or something like that. Like through to, like, the death beep right out to the end you it has right out. So my totally, my total daily insulin, went from over 100 to right around somewhere between 40 and 45

Scott Benner 1:11:10
oh, that's so interesting, I have to tell you. Going from 200 units in a day and a half to three days is a big deal already, you know. And then if you see another decrease with the GLP. That's even it's gonna be even more exciting for you. Really cool, and it should help you. It should help you. I mean, listen, I can't say enough good things about the GLP medication experience I'm having, you know, and not, I don't have diabetes, but my health is significantly better. The way I feel, to say is significantly better would be an understatement. I look better. Looking better is almost the least of my concerns, because I used to be burdened with that thing that you talk about, which is, I carry the weight. Well, it's hard for people to tell and that tricks you into believing that you're healthy, because nobody notices.

Tiffany 1:11:58
Well, and I don't give a damn what other people think, either. So that can be dangerous too. Exactly,

Scott Benner 1:12:01
yeah. And then the other side of it is, is that, you know, I've had my, both of my kids come to me at this point, Arden more recently, and she's like, Hey, I was looking at old pictures of us, and I you were fat, I didn't know. And I was like, this is an uplifting conversation. Thank you. But it was, it was interesting to hear from her that, like, you know, you slowly gain weight. Nobody notices, especially the people around you. And then you say things like, Oh, I know I'm way more than I should, but it's probably just 20 pounds. I probably just need to lose 20 pounds. And then you lose 20 for me, at least. And I was like, Oh, my God, well, more than 20, you know. And then I was down like, 30 pounds. I was like, Well, I guess more than 30. And then you start realizing exactly how far you've slid, and you don't, you didn't even know it. So anyway, it's a been a lesson. I actually consciously had the thought this morning that it might take me two years from when I started the GLP to when I actually feel like I'm in a in an optimal health situation, but that I got to let the process pay it out, play out, and just keep doing the things that I know to do, right and I can't care how long it takes. So

Tiffany 1:13:09
I mean, the thing that keeps kind of reverberating in my head is, is when you say, trust that you know what will happen. Will happen. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:13:18
yeah, it that it's funny, I use that around diabetes, but it's pretty, you know, important in a lot of aspects of your life. Just trust that what you know is going to happen is going to happen, and just kind of just let it play out, ends up being a big deal. And around the weight loss thing for me, especially because, you know, you have it in your I, uh, an acquaintance that went on it, and I was getting the texts a weekend. I'm still hungry. I thought this stuff worked. I haven't lost any weight. You know what I mean? Like, bottom like, hey, been doing it for like, two weeks, you know? Like, chill out, yeah. And then finally, a couple months into it, like, Hey, I've lost 10 pounds. And I was like, good for you, but then, but you gotta, it's all the way you couch it in your head then, because what you could say is, well, just 10 pounds, you know what I mean? Like, everything's kind of interpreted in the way you decide to ingest it, if that makes sense, oh,

Tiffany 1:14:10
it's totally, it's totally, I always said, like, life is what you make it like. You're gonna either view it like, glass half empty, glass half full, right? It's what you like, you have to be your own advocate. You have to take in charge of your own life and make choices. And if you don't like the results that you're getting, then you need to look somewhere else. Yeah, sometimes you

Scott Benner 1:14:33
just got to put your head down and keep going. Too true, because you're not there yet. And you know, just a little impatient, which is

Tiffany 1:14:41
well, may or may not be impatient. But

Scott Benner 1:14:46
listen, that lady you made a cry at the pharmacy, she definitely thinks you're

Tiffany 1:14:50
impatient. I'm sure she does. But disclaimer, I was in line for over an hour and had to call my husband to go pick up my kids because I was going to miss picking up my kids at daycare. Mm. Because I was in line so long. Listen,

Scott Benner 1:15:01
I'm okay with you yelling at her. It's fine. Sounds like you made out okay in the end, walked out of there all trying to fill with your insulin. You're

Speaker 2 1:15:08
like, I did. It got shut down. They're no longer in business. She's still

Scott Benner 1:15:12
telling that story to anybody who will listen. Probably she's like, she really scared

Tiffany 1:15:15
me. Oh, good. That means she learned her lesson. Listen,

Scott Benner 1:15:19
do your job. Everybody. That's, that's my message. Like

Tiffany 1:15:22
that, easy, just do your

Scott Benner 1:15:25
job. Tiffany had a goddamn life threatening emergency at work, and then was working again. Were your parents in the war? Where did you come up with this work ethic? By the way?

Tiffany 1:15:35
You know, middle class, paycheck to paycheck, people who you just had to honestly, you know, work hard for what you have. Yeah, it's

Scott Benner 1:15:42
used to watch my father go to work when he was sick, and I one day asked him, don't you have sick time? And he goes, Yeah, I don't want to use it when I'm not

Tiffany 1:15:51
feeling good, right? Like it's summer, like, I want to use this to go swimming, like, go to the beach.

Scott Benner 1:15:56
I didn't know that that meant, dude, I'm broke. I can't just take off from work. I got to save this for a good day.

Tiffany 1:16:01
Well, there is that too. Plus, I have, you know, the little like spawn of Satan that gets sick and then require me to take off time as well.

Scott Benner 1:16:10
So I thought this went very well. I appreciate you doing it very much. You hold on a second. I'd like to talk to you when I shall Sure. But thank you so much. You were terrific.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:19
Thank you.

Scott Benner 1:16:26
Thanks for tuning in today, and thanks to Medtronic diabetes for sponsoring this episode. We've been talking about Medtronic mini med 780 G system today, an automated insulin delivery system that helps make diabetes management easier day and night, whether it's their meal detection technology for the Medtronic extended infusion set, it all comes together to simplify life with diabetes. Go find out more at my link, Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox, the podcast episode that you just enjoyed was sponsored by ever since CGM. They make the ever since 365 that thing lasts a whole year. One insertion every year. Come on. You probably feel like I'm messing with you, but I'm not. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox this episode was sponsored by touched by type one. I want you to go find them on Facebook, Instagram, and give them a follow, and then head to touched by type one.org where you're going to learn all about their programs and resources for people with type one diabetes. 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 looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast, private, Facebook group. Juice box 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.

Please support the sponsors

---

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

#1484 Small Sips: Wake Up Hopeful

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

Each day is a new opportunity to manage diabetes with a fresh mindset.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

---

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

Scott Benner 0:00
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

Jenny, I'm like a fruit fly. I have a very small memory, a very short

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:35
Oh, I was gonna say, well, at least you went to memory. Because I was like, Fruit flies are really annoying. You are not annoying. Okay,

Scott Benner 1:41
hold on a second. Then what has a really low by the way, now I can hear everyone who thinks I'm annoying. Oh no, no, he's annoying. He was right, safe. But I have a short memory. I find it to be the way to get through life, like it's a purposefully short memory on some things. And the way I would tell you is that I wake up every morning hopeful. It doesn't matter what's happening in my life. It doesn't matter how bad things were the day before, how bad things have been for the last month, how sick people might be, you know, how long we've been fighting at something. I swear to you, I don't know why I'm grateful for it. I wake up every morning and I'm like, let's get this. This. Today's the day we get this. You know, I am

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:19
100% the same way, yeah, whether it's sunny outside or not, I wake up with a hope for what's coming in the day, and that it's, it is it's all gonna turn around like,

Scott Benner 2:30
today is gonna be the day you have no idea, like my wife is. She'd be thrilled to for me to share this, but she's going through menopause right now. And on top of that, yeah, perimenopause. She has perimenopause. Yeah, those are the words I keep hearing. And she also has significantly low iron at the moment, ferritin, iron saturation, iron binding, everything is very low, right? And so she needs an iron infusion. I believe she called out of work yesterday and slept till 430 in the afternoon. Oh, no, yeah. She's really stuck. And on top of that, she's having these perimenopause little problems too. So she's having all the problems of two different issues. And yesterday afternoon, I couldn't get her an appointment with a hematologist to get the iron infusion. And they told me, like, don't worry. Like, we're gonna, like, we'll call you. But I'm like, No, you won't, like, it's Thursday. You're not going to call me on Friday. You're going to call me on Monday, and then on Monday, and then on Monday, you're going to give her an appointment on Thursday, and then you're going to get her there on Thursday, and then you're going to say, Oh, now the insurance, it's going to be three weeks from now when this happens, right? And I'm like, I'm going to make this happen today. And so I got up this morning, and now my wife has an appointment at three o'clock at a different place. Yay. Because I just don't quit, like, I don't have that in me. I don't even know what it is. I don't take credit for it. It was not given to me by a parent, as far as I can tell. Like it's just lucky wiring, right? But when it comes to diabetes, I think you have to get up in the morning and not give up. And I start every day with diabetes thinking I have a mantra around type one, and it's, it's very quiet. I've said it on the podcast, but I don't say it out loud during the day. I'd rather stop a lower falling blood sugar than fight with a high blood sugar. That's how I managed diabetes, like at at its core, that's what I do. It starts with getting up in the morning and not being, I don't know, like not carrying the last day over, but I want to give a lot of like attention to the idea that if you have feet on the floor, or your basal is weak overnight, you wake up in the morning and you've been 300 overnight, or 60 overnight, or you open your eyes and your blood sugar goes from 85 to 185 like, it's gotta be a lot harder to be like, hey, everything's gonna be all right. It is. I want you guys to be able to find that hope and that joy in the morning. But I think it comes from the same thing we talk about over and over again. It comes from tools, and it comes from understanding how insulin works and timing and amount and mitigating as much as possible, being in that situation in the morning like that's what I think is important. Because I think that most people wake up and. It must be like opening your I don't have diabetes, right? But it must be like opening your eyes in a box hole. Somehow you fell asleep. It's Normandy, and you fell asleep somehow. And when you open your eyes for a half a second, you don't remember that Jerry's shooting a mortar at you. And then all of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Here it comes. Here it comes. Your adrenaline pops up and your day is ruined before you dries all the way open. That's got to be what it's like, right? I don't know. I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:25
think in the realm of sleep, I can't say that I remember ever having a dream in which I know that I have diabetes. That's interesting, right? So, and it's kind of the same concept of what you're talking about, that wake up in the morning like my alarm goes off. I don't think to just look at my CGM first thing in the morning. I know that that sounds very bizarre, like coming for me, but it is. I kind of wake up in that same realm of the alarm goes off. My brain kind of cycles through, what do I have coming for the day? Is it a weekend day? Is a day that, you know, get the boys up for school and kind of get rolling for the day, but unless I have alarms alerts or some craziness going off, that reminds me that diabetes is in the picture, and it kind of goes along with what you said. You know, if you've been 300 overnight, you're probably going to feel like trash in the morning. So that's going to remind you almost right away about diabetes versus stability, good quality sleep, and kind of get rolling from the start of the day in a place that allows you to move into your day with that hopeful kind of perspective. I

Scott Benner 6:35
don't want to ignore the fact that if you were low overnight or high overnight, that you're gonna feel horrible. Like, I'm not saying just like, Get up and push through it. That's I'm saying, let's figure out how that happens, so that you have stability overnight, so that you can wake up with the best possible, you know, start to the day, and

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:52
that you're not rolling over, like you said from yesterday's

Scott Benner 6:55
Oh, like, yeah, it's not even over yet, right? Like, yeah, over yet. Yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:59
I mean, in that it happens a lot with evening meals, whether they're really heavy, heavy meals, and your body is still processing them, or it's a really late, heavy meal, or any of that, absolutely that's a first thing on your brain. Then, is this done? Yeah, no, did I finally nail it? You're getting

Scott Benner 7:18
your ass kicked in an alley, and you pass out for a second when you open your eyes like, Oh, good. They're still hitting me. Still hitting me, right? Awesome. This isn't over. I genuinely think that these are all little things. They're sayings like, right? They're t shirt slogans that are meant to like, from my perspective, I try to sprinkle in things that I think will help you in moments when you need help, but you don't have the bandwidth to remember an entire episode of a podcast, or everything you Jenny said, or something like that. Like, you know, trust that what you know is going to happen is going to happen. Like, people say that that saves them sometimes. Yeah, I'll just Bolus for a juice box. I don't know what they even call them. I'm sure there's a word for like, that kind of stuff, but I'm just the cliche machine over here about diabetes, like I'm just churning and it ends up helping people. So I'm not saying ignore things aren't going well and just buck up like that is certainly not what I'm saying. But what I'm telling you is, if you can put yourself in that position to wake up in the morning and just be hopeful, it really is going to help a lot. I mean, it genuinely is going to bring a lot to your life. So go listen to the Pro Tip series and figure out how to make it so that you can sleep and wake up like a like a regular person who doesn't have diabetes a lot of the time.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:31
Agreed. I think a big piece that goes into that, too is, thankfully, again, our new technology. And I don't know if you've read them, maybe not, but the 2025, Ada, sort of standards of care this year, they have some very specific things that they've they've really addressed things like type twos should have access to a CGM, awesome. They should have right in terms of like type one screening should be there for type one, and from the technology standpoint, they absolutely have statements now within these guidelines of health care providers should learn how to use these systems accurately and assist their kind of patients in in using them, should be recommending them, whether they're FDA approved or the do it yourself, systems which are part of the recommendation, which is fantastic. What

Scott Benner 9:27
happened over at the ADA, somebody fall in their head and decide to do a good job? I don't, I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:31
don't know, but I mean, they're, they're really fantastic adjustments to the standards they're I think they're coming to realize, as you're saying, this hopeful nature, it goes along with tools that are working well, right? And we have to put the tools in the hands of the people that need them sooner than later.

Scott Benner 9:51
Yeah, I'm a proponent of that idea. Like, I've been through all the conversations and the ideas around, you know, like, oh well, sometimes you know that i. Of like, oh, you should get a, get a needle in a meter and figure it out that way first. Like, I don't know. Like, I think you need to have as much information as possible. Some people are going to be overwhelmed by it. That's fine, but we'll help them get through that. Everyone's progress shouldn't be, you know, held back because some people will be overwhelmed by it. Because a lot of people won't be, won't be, yeah, and so it has to stop being like a zero sum, you know? And

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:25
I would say it's amazing, from what you just said about some people will be overwhelmed, and some people won't. It will surprise you, the people who you would expect it to overwhelm, and then it doesn't, and it doesn't, it absolutely is the best thing you could have done for them, and you didn't think again. This is a judgment piece. Unfortunately, judgment is there. And do you think that they're quote, unquote smart enough to think that they can do it? I mean, all the things that you have no right to really pass over in telling somebody that this is an available piece, let's see if it can work for you. You can't

Scott Benner 10:59
prepare for failure. No, it's the wrong way to come at this. You have to, you have to prep people for success, and for those people who don't have that success, then you pull them out and help them. But you don't just set everybody up to fail and then hope some of them figure it out on their own, which has basically been how this has been going since, you know, for 30 years before my daughter had diabetes, you're all gonna die. Oh, look, some of them didn't. What a plan. Jesus, like, you know, like, what a plan. Great job. Well, listen, whoever at the ADA, whoever found their balls and decided to do this, I think it's awesome. So good for you. Thank you. Yeah, that's enough, Jenny, we're done.

You Are you starting to see patterns, but you can't quite make sense of them. You're like, Oh, if I Bolus here, this happens, but I don't know what to do. Should I put in a little less, a little more? If you're starting to have those thoughts, you're starting to think this isn't going the way the doctor said it would. I think I see something here, but I can't be sure. Once you're having those thoughts, you're ready for the diabetes Pro Tip series from the Juicebox Podcast. It begins at Episode 1000 you can also find it at Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu, and you can find a list in the private Facebook group. Just check right under the featured tab at the top, it'll show you lists of a ton of stuff, including the Pro Tip series, which runs from episode 1000 to 1025

if you're newly diagnosed. Check out the bold beginnings series. Find it at Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu in the feature tab of the private Facebook group, or go into the audio app you're listening in right now and search for Juicebox Podcast, bold beginnings. Juicebox is one word. Juicebox Podcast, bold beginnings. This series is perfect for newly diagnosed people. 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 if you're not already subscribed or following in your favorite audio app, please take the time now to do that. It really helps the show and get those automatic downloads set up so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. You.

Please support the sponsors

---

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