Until a year ago I’d never listened to a podcast on any subject
and didn’t know that Type 1 podcasts were a thing, but I met a woman at the
local JDRF Summit who suggested I contact Scott to talk about managing T1 with
MDI – multiple daily injections. I was
curious and started listening to an episode every day at the gym. Soon after that I reached out to Scott and we
scheduled a call…we talked back in October and he posted our episode this week.
I won’t spoil things for you…if you want to know about
our conversation you have to listen! But
I’ll tell you I had a great time talking to Scott, and I laughed again a bunch of times as I
listened to the episode this week. In
some ways, we manage diabetes completely differently. Scott’s daughter eats high carb foods that
would make me gain weight if looked at them.
You know, foods that are pretty normal for a kid her age. I eat a low carb, high fat diet I started long before T1 but that helps me reduce the size of sugar
spikes. Arden wears an Omnipod insulin pump; I
use pens and do an injection every time I’m about to eat or need to bring my
sugar down. But the reality is that our
principles in managing diabetes are pretty much the same – try to have
basically normal blood sugars, don’t be afraid of insulin, don’t allow a high
sugar to stick around, and most importantly…live life and enjoy it without
spending all of our time focused on diabetes. Life’s too short for that nonsense.
If you’ve listened to the episode, keep scrolling for an update since we recorded – no cheating! If you haven’t
listened yet either follow this
link or go to your favorite podcast app to find episode 216 of the Juicebox
Podcast. It’ll all make
more sense if you do…without listening, you’ll never understand this post’s
title. And I’m not explaining! I can't show you a picture of a flying polar bear, much less me riding one, so here's one strolling instead. Just imagine if he came flying over the Great Lakes and you could get a harness on him. Come on, just imagine for a second...
UPDATE: I saw my endo Thursday, coincidentally just days after Scott released our episode. My A1c is 5.1%, up a bit from last year’s 4.7%. I’m not remotely unhappy with that number, it’s a great average and I’m doing well. We recorded the episode not long after my last appointment, and you heard me tell Scott that my doc wanted to look at my Clarity reports* – he wanted to see more detail than just a 90 day average trend because he’s convinced I’m running low blood sugars all the time and that those are bringing my average down in an unhealthy way. 6 months later, he didn't disappoint and wanted me to hand over my phone so he could see the details himself. And…I don’t think he’s going to ask to see them again. He was visibly surprised to see what I could have told him to expect…things are generally pretty consistent when I’m home and doing things my way. Below is the overlay chart of the last 7 days that I found still open on my phone when I got home from my appointment. I’ll keep the graph from my week on vacation with Mom to myself, it’s nowhere near this pretty. J
Disclaimer...they don't all look as good as this one. There's usually a lot of consistency, but the last week has been exceptionally flat. Normally there's a spike or two up to at least 150, if not higher. This was particularly good timing right before seeing an endo who has trust issues.
* Clarity is an app from Dexcom that shows all kinds of different trends. I can see data for individual days, overlays like the one above, look for patterns...and see more statistics than most people care to see. It's a fun toy to play with once in a while.
