Chris (Emma's dad) (4:36)

Yeah, well, I agree with you. I love the approach. I mean, I've listened to a lot of the episodes. I think Emma actually mentioned it in her episodes that I stumbled into the podcast immediately. When she was diagnosed, I was away at a work trip. I got a call from my wife, and she said that emma had type 1 diabetes, and I had absolutely no idea what that meant. That's actually what I said. I said, I don't know what that means. I feel like I'm supposed to be shocked. I had no idea. I listened to a lot of podcasts, so I just opened up. I opened up my podcast player and searched for diabetes, and yours was the first one. So I started listening from the beginning.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (5:12)

Isn't that something, how that works? Yeah.

Chris (Emma's dad) (5:14)

Yeah.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (5:14)

Anyway, I think this, you know, it'll be interesting to get the other side of it. Do you want to trash your daughter at any point? Like, I mean, how.

Chris (Emma's dad) (5:21)

Absolutely. I'm still trying to plan on exactly how to do that. I did ask her before I dropped her off at school this morning if there was anything that was absolutely off limits that I wasn't allowed to talk about. So there's a couple of things that I won't be able to say, but I don't know. Well, I'm sure throughout the conversation I'll find somewhere to get my back.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (5:40)

Very, very fair. So tell me a little bit about that. You're in that hotel room. How long were you there for by the time she called? And how long did you have to stay afterwards?

Chris (Emma's dad) (5:50)

Yeah, real quick. I'll start with. She had a story about the bees. She fell into some bees, and that sort of led to her diagnosis. Just the lead up to that. It was a couple of months. We don't know if that's what triggered it or whatever, but she'd been sort of acting out of character. She was just always a great kid. We have three kids. They're all absolutely awesome, happy, fun kids. And she just wasn't herself. She had just started going to daycare, and she was a monster, I guess is the way to put it. Like, I'm like, I don't know who this kid is. We would drop her off and she would be crying, and we felt terrible leaving her because my wife stays at home with the kids, which is awesome that we're able to do for them.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (6:26)

And.

Chris (Emma's dad) (6:26)

And. But, you know, she wanted to get her socialized and get her around some other kids. Yeah, we feel terrible that she just doesn't want to be there and she's crying, and it's so unusual because she's such a great kid who's always laughing and loves to play with other kids. So we drop her off and she'd be crying. We'd pick her up, she'd be crying, and I mean, we could. As we'd pull into the parking lot, we could hear the screams from outside. It was awful. Absolutely heartbreaking. And she was really tired. And my wife and I, or my wife and Emma went on a trip just a Couple days before diagnosis and I had a work trip planned. So I was a couple hours away and they were in Rhode island. And Molly called a couple times and said, I think I might take her to the doctor. She's just really tired. She's like lethargic. All she wants to do is just lay around and drink juice. She loved Capri sun, so right up to diagnosis, she was just rocking back the Capri sun nonstop because she was so thirsty and wetting diapers like we had never seen. And they were visiting her sister and they had just got one of those brand new like ghost beds. These like $3,000 super nice beds. And they let Emma take a nap in there. And of course she peed completely through her diaper and all through that brand new ghost bed. That was awesome.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (7:46)

Did you have to buy a new one?

Chris (Emma's dad) (7:47)

I don't know. My sister in law, I believe she probably did if I had to guess. But she said, holy cow, I've never seen a kid pee so much. What does she have diabetes? And we didn't think anything of it, but after the diagnosis a couple days later, we thought that was pretty funny.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (8:04)

How did your sister in law come up with that? Do you know?

Chris (Emma's dad) (8:07)

I don't know. I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think her mom has type two. Okay, so they knew the signs of high blood sugar being, you know, excess urination and whatnot.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (8:16)

That would mean your wife's mom had type two and.

Chris (Emma's dad) (8:18)

Not my wife's mom. It was my, my sister in law. So my. So my. Let's see, my wife's sister is of the other sexual preference, so she has a wife.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (8:29)

So I see. Also, that wouldn't have meant anything. I did familiar math completely wrong. It could have been your wife's brothers. Wife.

Chris (Emma's dad) (8:38)

Yeah, yeah. Somewhere, some remote family member. Yeah, that's kind of what led up to us being like, all right, we need to, we need to go to the doctor and figure out what's going on.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (8:46)

Okay.

Chris (Emma's dad) (8:47)

Then I got the call and I started listening to. I think it was episode two. It was the, the one. Somebody from Dancing with the Stars maybe.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (8:56)

Oh, yeah. God. It's funny, I just brought him up. He was actually on American Idol.

Chris (Emma's dad) (9:01)

Yeah, that's what it was.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (9:02)

And his dad, no, his uncle was super famous.

Chris (Emma's dad) (9:06)

Yeah, I don't remember. Yeah, I had completely forgotten that his.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (9:09)

Uncle is Carlos Santana.

Chris (Emma's dad) (9:11)

Oh, that's right.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (9:12)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris (Emma's dad) (9:13)

Adam something, maybe.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (9:15)

Adam Lasher. Oh my God, you got me too it, Chris. Thank you. It's so funny. Yesterday somebody asked Me, what was the first episode you ever did? And I told them that I had this kind of cockamamie idea that I was going to read my blog into a microphone and that's what I thought the podcast was going to be. And that I tried it. And very quickly, like literally within minutes, I said to myself, like, I wouldn't even list. This is terrible. And in that time between me trying that and not knowing what to do, I had a podcast that was online and ready to go and no content for it, and this kid pops up on American Idol. And I very much said yesterday, I don't know where I got the nerve for this. Like, I reached out to him, I was like, do you want to be on my diabetes podcast? And I didn't say the rest of it like, that I've never made before. And he said, yes. And that's how that very oddly placed interview is at the very beginning of the podcast.

Chris (Emma's dad) (10:05)

Oh, it's awesome. I mean, you hooked me on day one. So I, you know, I listened to that and a few other episodes on my couple hour ride home to meet my wife at the. What I thought was going to be the hospital. Right before I got home, I got a call saying that she. They were sending her home. So the reason that Emma doesn't remember anything about her hospital stay was that there wasn't one, which is really cool. So what ended up happening is they brought her into the pediatrician and where we live, the pediatrician's office and the diabetes pediatric diabetes clinic are in the same building, which is pretty convenient in this case. So they went into the doctor and the first thing that the doctor said was, this kind of looks like diabetes. So they went and they did a blood glucose, and I can't remember how high it was, but her A1C was like 14.1, if I remember right. So it was up there and. But she wasn't in dka. So they gave her some insulin. And it just turned out to. It also happened to be that the diabetes specialist was Molly's child, my wife's childhood pediatrician. So they had instant rapport. You know, she walked into the room and said, oh, Corey, like I haven't seen you in years. And it just turned out to be that. So they had, they had rapport. Emma responded really well to insulin. They gave her some humilograph in the office, and he could tell that, that Molly could handle that type of stuff. So they gave her just a real basic, like, you know, let's do a 10 to 1 carb ratio. And here's the don't die advice. Stick it up on your refrigerator. Call us if you have any questions. And they sent her home like three or four hours after being there.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (11:41)

Okay.

Chris (Emma's dad) (11:41)

And then they said, okay, we're going to have to go back in tomorrow and we'll have some education. So we went and we had that Pink Panther book, of course. So I, like, stayed up all night and read that Pink Panther book, and I still don't remember a single word of what was in it. I just remember the COVID of it. We went to training the next day and learned the basics. And then I was listening to the podcast at the same time. So within a month, I knew I wanted a Dexcom. And I brought it up to the CDEs that were in the office, and they said, yeah, you definitely do want that, but we have a rule here. You kind of got to go for a year without having just on injections. I ended up calling the Dexcom and Omnipod reps, and I don't know exactly how, but they thought that I was some sort of representative or something. I'm not really sure what it was, but they ended up calling the office and talking to Corey. They sort of laughed about the miscommunication, thinking that I was looking for supplies to sort of become a reseller or something like that, or that I was an educator. I guess it made them all have a conversation and they could tell that we could handle it. And Emma was a tough kid. So, like, I don't know, about two months in, we ended up getting. Getting on Dexcom and Omnipod.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (12:56)

Even if they wanted you to do MDI for a year, why couldn't you do MDI with a dexcom?

Chris (Emma's dad) (13:00)

Probably could. It was just. That's the way they. They were like, I guess so, not just mdi, but MDI and manual finger sticks. They'd like to make people wake up at 2am is what I think it is like to just punish them a little bit. Seems to be.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (13:13)

I understand the concept. I think it's misguided to some degree.

Chris (Emma's dad) (13:16)

Oh. Oh, I. Yeah. I mean, I've heard you talk about it many times on here, and I couldn't agree more. Like, I don't really know why they don't just stick a Dexcom on day one. Emma sort of talked about the diagnosis of her cousin like he was over for Thanksgiving. His girlfriend was talking about he was peeing a lot and, you know, being grumpy and all that sort of stuff. So we test his blood Sugar was like 500 so it was, it was Thanksgiving on a Friday night. So the, the hospital systems here are kind of in decay. You know, it's every week they're, they're talking about shutting down. They've closed most of the ambulatory and walk in clinics like it's, it's kind of rough. So we knew he wasn't going to get the best, the best care if you went in. We have mountains of supplies. So, you know, we kind of. And he actually did a paper when he was in college on type 1 diabetes because of Emma. So he's, he's sort of like been close to it. So we just sort of hung out and showed him how it all worked. And so in a, you know, over the weekend he got his blood sugar back into range and, you know, I threw a G7 on him and, and he had all that to go into the clinic. And of course, as you would imagine, he got faced with, we don't think you have diabetes because your blood sugar.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (14:27)

Is in range because I fixed it over the weekend.

Chris (Emma's dad) (14:30)

Yeah. Yeah. So it was a struggle. It took like, I think three or four months for him to get a diagnosis. What part of the country we live in Maine.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (14:39)

That's right. Oh. Oh, my gosh. Are you. The story with the. You helped the gentleman who's going to bequeath his land to you one day. The Contour Next Gen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of the Juice Box 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 contornext.com/juicebox, you're going to find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, cvs, Rite Aid, Kroger and Meijer. You could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips and 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 juicebox 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. Unlike other systems that will wait until your blood sugar is 180 before delivering corrections. The MiniMed 780G system is the only system with meal detection technology that automatically detects rising sugar levels and delivers more insulin as needed to help keep your sugar levels in range even if you're not a perfect carb counter. Today's episode of the Juice Box Podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes and their MiniMed 780G system, which gives you real choices because the MiniMed 780G system works with the Instinct sensor made by Abbott as well as the Simplera Sync and Guardian 4 sensors, giving you options. The Instinct sensor is the longest wear Sensor yet, lasting 15 days and designed exclusively for the MiniMed 780G. And don't forget Medtronic Diabetes makes technology accessible for you with comprehensive insurance support programs to help you with your out of pocket costs. We're switching from other pump and CGM systems. Learn more and get started today with my link medtronicdiabetes.com juicebox Are you the story with the you helped the gentleman who's going to bequeath his land to you one day?

Chris (Emma's dad) (17:15)

Yeah, I think that's probably why you called it into the woods. Yes.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (17:18)

Oh my God, that's awesome.

Chris (Emma's dad) (17:20)

Yeah, that's a crazy story. I'll give a little short version of it here. So I'm in it. You and I talked a little bit last time about doing some AI stuff and whatnot, but I've done it stuff forever. I used to work at Circuit City. I built these custom computers so people would come in and Circuit City sold computers, but I would take them apart and dremel a hole on the side and put in plexiglass and flashy lights and I'd make these gaming computers and upgrade them. This guy came in one day and this grumpy old, old New York guy, sick accent, and he says, I want to talk to the guy that built that computer. So I talked to him, he says, I want to start playing video games. I want that computer, but I want it for half the price because you're going to come out to my house and I'm going to pay you cash. And I mean, I was like, you know, 20 years old and I was like, okay, sure, that sounds great. So I went out and showed him how to play video games, built him some computers and helped him with miscellaneous tech stuff. Like he was really into music, so I'd help him set up different audio systems and showed him how to convert from VHS to DVD and Just miscellaneous stuff while helping him play games. And he was just an eccentric guy. He built a battleship. He had an airplane Runway, like, right on his land out here. And he bought the land for like $3,000, just almost by accident back in the 70s. Just farmland. And he built a Runway on it. And he flew his plane in and he built a cabin. Then he retired at, like, 42 and turned it into a bed and breakfast. It just built this, like, really cool place and lived out his days just playing video games and doing miscellaneous hobbies and shooting guns and just a really fascinating guy. So I always hung around, but there was really nobody else in his life, just him and his wife. And when he got sick and died a couple of years ago, he sort of said, chris, I need somebody to take care of my wife. You've got a couple young boys, and I was kind of hoping maybe you'd help out. And I, of course, said, absolutely, we'd love to help. Like, we're kind of caregiving, volunteer type people. We do a lot of stuff with animals and whatnot. Plus he has a whole pile of shih tzu dogs. And they. They loved us anyway, so it just sort of happened naturally. He passed away three weeks later, which was just unbelievable. So I kind of went out there and stayed a lot of the time and helped his wife through hospice care and whatnot. And then we just continue to take care of the place. And then, as Emma had mentioned, just, I don't know, a year or so ago, she sort of dropped the news on us that they're leaving the land to us, which is absolutely insane. It's like a. Like a fairy tale. For years, I went out here and looked at this guy's beautiful land, and he'd always look at me and say, boy, isn't this. Isn't this beautiful? Isn't this the place you'd like to live in? You know, and he'd always just sort of say that stuff, but I had no idea that, like, this grumpy old.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (20:05)

Guy was measuring you up.

Chris (Emma's dad) (20:07)

Yeah, yeah. And that's sort of what he said. He's like, you know how things run around here. I understand how your brain works, and I know you're a good guy.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (20:15)

And.

Chris (Emma's dad) (20:16)

Yeah, so that's the story.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (20:18)

It helped me with my wife when I couldn't do it myself. And here's the way I'm going to say thank you.

Chris (Emma's dad) (20:24)

Absolutely.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (20:24)

How many acres?

Chris (Emma's dad) (20:26)

It's 102 acres.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (20:28)

Wow, that's really awesome. Yeah, it's nice you to tell his story because I like the way he just seems to effortlessly move through his life and make big changes and shifts. The only thing I didn't understand about your story was he built a battleship. What are you telling me?

Chris (Emma's dad) (20:44)

Oh, yeah, that was one of the coolest things. It's still out there. He built the German battleship, the Graf Spee, which I believe was like the first battle, the first ship sunk in World War II, maybe, okay, but he just. In his basement, he. I mean, there was no YouTube or anything to figure it out from back then. He didn't have a background in it. He just decided he was going to build a battleship. So he started off, he was just going to build a large model and he ended up building. I don't remember the exact measure, the exact size. I think it's maybe like a 11 20th scale or something like that. But it was like a 18 foot little mini battleship. And he went to the extent of having. He had. He put all the little guns and the little people on it and all the rigging, but it was big enough that he was actually able to sit in it. So he would play like, what is it? Rise of the Valkyries? It was, you know, some classical music. He'd just blare it while he'd ride around the lakes of Maine on this little battleship with war flags hanging from it.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (21:43)

Wait, now you're telling me it floated?

Chris (Emma's dad) (21:46)

Oh, it floated. And he drove it and brought it all over, all over the state, all over New England. And it's in a museum. I helped him sell it to a museum up in Canada. And that's where it is now.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (21:59)

That's really insane. Oh, well, that's lovely. So do you live? I'm sorry, no, please, what were you gonna say?

Chris (Emma's dad) (22:04)

Oh, all I was gonna say is a fascinating side story to that is when we were trying to figure out what to do with this boat, he had me call the place that the ship was actually sunk. I think it's called Montevideo, somewhere down in like Central America. And I couldn't call them, but I found their email address for like the naval base and I sent them a message and it explained everything. That this, you know, that this guy had built this, this boat by hand and he's looking for a place to sort of show it off so that it lives out through history. And the response I got, that I never shared with him because I didn't want to. I didn't want to break his heart. They said the only thing we do with that boat is sink it. So it could be right down There next to the other one. Oh, I know. I was like, wow, okay. Thank you for your time.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (22:51)

Yeah.

Chris (Emma's dad) (22:52)

Yep.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (22:52)

Because I'm gonna ask you a question. I don't find myself asking men that often. This is just my remembrance of me making the podcast. Why are you such a nice person?

Chris (Emma's dad) (23:03)

Oh, let's see. I think it's because I'll relate it to some of your podcast episodes. I think it's because I score Almost a perfect 10 on the aces, and I, for some reason, got the resilient side of it.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (23:19)

Ah. And none of the other stuff. Some of it.

Chris (Emma's dad) (23:22)

Some of the other stuff. I mean, none of the other stuff as far as, like, I don't have any of the Aces, but, I mean, I have my mental health demons that I battle. And actually, thanks to your podcast, I got into therapy. Like, listening to you and Erica talk. I was like, oh, I would love to talk to somebody like this. And that's helped a ton of.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (23:43)

Oh, you're gonna make her cry when she hears that. She's gonna be so happy to know that.

Chris (Emma's dad) (23:47)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I. I hope so. I mean, it really. It's. It's been insanely helpful, and it's helped. I mean, most of my family now.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (23:54)

That's lovely, Chris. For people who don't know, we. I think we've done a. An episode on it with Erica at some point, but the Aces are the. The orig. The original 10 categories are adverse childhood experiences. And they. If you have a certain number of them, you're almost certain to have certain issues as an adult. So they're physical or sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, witnessing domestic violence, like your mother being treated violently, etc. Household substance abuse, household mental illness, a separation or divorce with your parents or someone in the household being incarcerated. If. If those things have happened in your life, the more you have, it kind of compounds. And I can explain a lot of the. I don't know, a lot of the troubles you might be having as an adult. So you. You identified some of those, and you were like, oh, that's me.

Chris (Emma's dad) (24:51)

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, even as you're reading it now, I was like, oh, I might go for the. I might go for the high score.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (24:57)

Yeah. Yeah, I might be able to score a 10 here. Hold on, everybody. And so that happened to you, and then what came of it is you not wanting to be like that. Yeah.

Chris (Emma's dad) (25:06)

I mean, from as young as I can remember, so my mom was an alcoholic. My parents split before I was born, so I grew up with Them just bashing each other constantly. My dad went through some sort of midlife crisis and quit his job when he was like 30. And I was a very late in life baby. From my dad's perspective, I was a welfare baby because I was born just before my sister's 18th birthday. Oh, I noticed.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (25:31)

Oh, Chris, I gotta stop you. I know people who've done that. Oh yeah, they have babies on a schedule to stay on welfare. Right, right, right. What's that? Okay, sorry. No, go on. And then I'll come back to my question.

Chris (Emma's dad) (25:45)

It's okay. Now here's, here's the good part of that story, is that when my dad died, I was able to figure that out for sure. And I found a bunch of letters from just probably four months before I was born between my mom and my dad and my sister. And they were happy and they were living together and everything was fine. My mom didn't know she was pregnant, but everything was great. And then there was an incident with my sister where my dad, he thought that there was something going on with her boyfriend and that she was lying all the time and essentially he kicked her out. And my mom said, well, I'm going with her. And that was that. But it was just about four months before, four or five months before I was born. It meant a lot to me to be like, ah, I was conceived in love.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (26:35)

Yeah, they were, There was a good moment for them. And that's when you were conceived.

Chris (Emma's dad) (26:39)

Yeah.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (26:39)

Yeah. That's lovely. I'm glad you were able to find that. Yeah, that. Because otherwise you, I mean, you're going to come to the conclusion that it was, it was time to get paid again. So here comes Chris.

Chris (Emma's dad) (26:48)

Right you go. Yeah, absolutely. That, that's what I thought for a long time.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (26:53)

Geez, that must have been hard to live with.

Chris (Emma's dad) (26:55)

I don't know, it was just. Everything was so crazy as a child. So I lived with my mom, but she was an absolutely severe alcoholic. I was pretty much raising myself anyway. I mean, I remember from a young age having to hide from CPS knocking on the door and having to like, I would eight or nine years old, I would call the liquor stores in the area and be like, hey, can you please not sell my mom any alcohol? Oh, you know, she was passed out all the time. So when I was like 10, my dad was, he worked a couple of hours away. I basically called him one day and just begged him to come home because I didn't want to live there anymore. So I had to go to court and had to like, testify in front of the judge and whatnot. But anyway, I ended up going to live with my dad, which was better than dealing with my mom because my dad just smoked weed. He didn't drink at the time, so it was. It was better. He was happier, didn't have a job or anything. So we were. We squatted for a long time. I mean, we lived in houses that. That he either used to live in or he'd make a deal that he'd take care of a house for a few months and trade for us being able to stay there. So we were homeless for quite a while, but so just everything was so crazy. It didn't. Didn't really matter. So, you know, I. I think that's. That's where I built the resilience was I'd been through so much weird stuff that just didn't matter.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (28:14)

Yeah, diabetes. You're like, oh, Jesus, this is easy. I shouldn't have much trouble with this. Do you prefer chaos or calm now, as an adult?

Chris (Emma's dad) (28:22)

Oh, calm, no question. I mean, I do. I thrive in chaos, but I like to control the chaos, if that makes sense. You know, we're. We're very busy. We're into a ton of stuff. We have chickens and we foster cats and we. We're into robotics, and we do, you know, Amazon a bunch of sports, and my son's in D and D clubs and math clubs, and we're always traveling around and doing all this stuff. So we're very, very busy. That's the type of chaos I prefer now versus the, like, the sky is falling chaos. Like, when I got diagnosed with diabetes, that was a sky is falling kind of chaos. Definitely threw me into a funk for quite a while, you know, until I. I wrapped my head around it. And that's kind of how I handle most everything is like, there's the initial, like, okay, we've got to figure this out, and I go into, like, survival mode, and then once I figure it out, then. Then it's autopilot. And that's how I kind of handle everything. Like, any issue that comes up, just throw my all into it, figure it out, and then move on.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (29:28)

I want to hear about the funk. So tell me about that. Like, she's diagnosed and. And you fall into a bit of. Would you call it a depression or just.

Chris (Emma's dad) (29:35)

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Just a. Like, you know, this is the only thing that matters. Just to add to this, I have adhd, which I didn't know until my boys got diagnosed with adhd. And then I. It made A whole lot of sense. And this was right prior to me being medicated. And one of the ways that it presents for me is either everything's overwhelming and there's a million inputs all at once, or it's just absolute, complete hyperfocus. And with diabetes, that's what it was. It was just the only thing that mattered is making sure that Emma's healthy, that everything's going to be okay. So I remember when she first came home and I realized the relationship of carbohydrates to insulin, and it was right before Halloween. So I'm like, is she going to be able to have candy for Halloween? And I remember at nighttime, we used to have these Dove chocolates that we'd keep in the house. And I'd grab one out of the bowl, and I remember going to eat it and being like, Emma would have to bolus for this. And it just set me on this sort of mental journey about, like, understanding everything and empathizing with her. Yeah. So that's. That's what I mean by funk. It just sent me into this, like, overthinking everything and just really only focusing on this.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (30:52)

Were you reflective in a good way, or were you thinking about it in an obsessive way?

Chris (Emma's dad) (30:57)

I would say the first one. My wife would probably say the second one. Probably a combination of the two.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (31:03)

Oh, my gosh. So the candy dish set you on. On this path. Yeah.

Chris (Emma's dad) (31:09)

Yeah. Actually, it really was. It was. It was a piece of chocolate.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (31:12)

Yeah. That just kind of made you think. I mean, I. I imagine any of us who are being thoughtful, who have kids with type one have had a moment where we picked up a piece of food and thought, oh, this. This doesn't feel fair.

Chris (Emma's dad) (31:24)

Yeah.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (31:25)

Yeah.

Chris (Emma's dad) (31:25)

In a way, like. So as far as that, like, obsessive thing you mentioned, I did. I did go the route of, see obsessive. But there's a silver lining. There's a positive, positive side of it. I really dove into nutrition and just trying to wrap my head around how food works in the body and how insulin works. It was kind of pre. A lot of your management episodes and whatnot with Jenny, but about the same time, a lot of them started coming out. I was also listening to Joe Rogan a lot, and that was back when he had a lot of people talking about nutrition coming on.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (31:56)

Okay.

Chris (Emma's dad) (31:57)

I really dove into it, and I. I got myself really healthy. I mean, at the time, back then, I was probably, like, 170, 180 pounds. I'm five seven. I'm a nerd, physically. Active nerd. Like, I. I've always been very active, but I always had extra weight on me. And I learned pretty quickly that, like, oh, if I just track my macros and understand, you know, reduce my carbon intake and, you know, add some intermittent fasting in here and within, I don't know, maybe a year, I got myself to a point that I was like, whoa, I look different, I feel different. I have so much more energy. And all I did is make these little minor changes here and there in how I eat. Like, I cut out sugar and I just started eating more, like, kind of nothing from a box, you know what I mean? Just like a paleo kind of thing. And I got myself into really good shape. And then that just sort of naturally started spreading to. As I cooked and as I, you know, whether it was around diabetes or. Or even just cooking for the family, just like, spreading some of that ideas. And it was interesting to watch, like, everything fall in line. Like, one of the things we talk about is how Emma's diagnosis, it definitely sort of helped us all become healthier people.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (33:08)

Did your wife come along with that on that ride with you? Or did she come along begrudgingly or. I'm always interested in how one person's change affects the. The dynamic.

Chris (Emma's dad) (33:18)

Yeah, I mean, I, like, I went. I went hard into it, so. A little too hard, probably, but I mean, for their perspective, you know, because she's like, you know, we're still trying to eat all the regular foods, so there were definitely times that I was, like, being over prescriptive or whatever, being like, hey, before you eat that, did you know how many grams of carbs are in that? And, you know, they're like, shut up. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, so my boys are wired a lot like I am, so they were like, oh, fascinating. You know, and.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (33:49)

And.

Chris (Emma's dad) (33:49)

And sometimes they'd be like, that's fascinating. I'm going to go eat this bowl of fudge now.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (33:53)

Yeah, fascinating. I'm not stopping. And mom is rolling her eyes all the way to the back of her head right now.

Chris (Emma's dad) (33:58)

Absolutely.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (33:59)

Hey, you didn't get to, like, nootropic gum or something like that? How far did you fall down this rabbit hole?

Chris (Emma's dad) (34:04)

No, nothing like that. Good for you, you know? Well, I. I got kids to feed. You know, there's a limited amount of money that you make in the world.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (34:11)

Nootropic gum?

Chris (Emma's dad) (34:12)

Yeah. If. I mean, I might have tried it. I remember trying alpha brain for a month and then being like, that seems like expensive pee, but, you know, may. Maybe it did something, but not enough for me to try it a second month.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (34:23)

I'd like to give you credit for having an open mind and trying something in general so you get yourself in, like, awesome shape. Your. Your kids are interested but not doing it. Your wife is listening. And then eventually, just. What? It just kind of bled over. You just kept going, cooked a certain way and didn't give him a choice?

Chris (Emma's dad) (34:41)

No, no, not even like that. It was just like. I mean, I don't know, it was like making little changes, right? Like, changing out the type of pasta that we use, changing out the type of pasta sauce, and maybe getting a different bread. Like, a lot of the stuff that I hear you and Jenny talking about as well, but just, like, mixing in little changes. Yeah, but then they. They noticed it as well. Right? Like, my. Both my boys started noticing, like. Oh, like, looking. Looking much better when I look in the mirror, and I feel stronger and have more energy. So it just. It just sort of happened. That's awesome. Yeah.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (35:15)

Yeah. You dug in pretty early on with the podcast to learn about diabetes and stuff. Would you say there was ever a time where you guys struggled, you know, and where. What was that like? Or, you know?

Chris (Emma's dad) (35:27)

Yeah, I mean, the. The early days, for sure. Trying to find that balance between keeping her safe and healthy and not being, like, totally overbearing and having to be by her side. And I wanted her to be able to choose what she wanted to eat. So I actually remember, like, you had a podcast episode one time about a kid that wanted to eat some Skittles or M&MS. Or something along those lines, and he tried a little bit, tried the bolus. That didn't work. And he wrote it down, made an adjustment. And I just. I remember those chocolates that I was talking about at the beginning. Emma loved those things, and I was like, well, let's use that, and let's figure that out. So we did that, and we just sort of figured it out one little thing at a time. And then we just rinsed and repeated with that to be able to let her have the things she wants and have predictable outcomes. And then within just a couple of months, we went from like, 14A1C a diagnosis to the next visit was a 7, next visit was a 6. And then it's been 6 or below ever since then. Just had her endo meeting last month. It was like 5.6, I think. Yeah, we just kept rolling with that. Then with the introduction of Loop, and I'm a software engineer anyway, so I remember buying a Mac and setting up loop and getting all that done. But now with the newer versions, we have this loop caregiver so we can manage things remotely. So that enabled us to start sending her to camp and being able to just kind of keep an eye on things and giving her some of the control, but us still being able to, like, fix things remotely if stuff goes sideways.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (37:03)

Hey, the loop caregiver, that's. It's the icon with the blue circle, right? Has it not been working for a while for you?

Chris (Emma's dad) (37:10)

Oh, no. I use it every single day and I'm looking at it. It's a blue circle. Yeah, blue circle with a CG inside it.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (37:17)

And your Night Scout can be in there as well? Yeah, yeah.

Chris (Emma's dad) (37:21)

I mean, it connects to Night Scout, so that's how it functions. Of course.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (37:25)

Can you troubleshoot something for me while I have you here?

Chris (Emma's dad) (37:27)

Oh, yeah, yeah. What's up?

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (37:28)

So it hasn't been working for a while. I haven't been able. I mean, it's working as much as I can see things, but I haven't been able to send boluses or change targets or anything like that. And now I just opened it up to talk to you about it, and it says, update available. A new version is available. 4.1.0 is a recommended update. I hit. Okay, but how do I update that?

Chris (Emma's dad) (37:46)

So normally the way that I do it is through. Through a GitHub repository.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (37:51)

Oh, I have TestFlight, I think.

Chris (Emma's dad) (37:54)

Yeah. So that's where it lands. It'll land in test flight. But I don't know if you build your apps or if you have somebody else build your apps, but somebody goes into GitHub and sets up an action. So you go into GitHub, find the repo, you pull down the latest code from the repo, sync it with the source that gets you the latest version, then you'd build the app, making sure that all your Apple stuff is in. If you've got another app building that you get through TestFlight regularly, then most everything's all set up and probably just need to rebuild the app.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (38:24)

So. May I be completely honest? Yeah. I know what GitHub is.

Chris (Emma's dad) (38:33)

Sure.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (38:33)

You do a lot of what you said after that. Okay. Alluded to me.

Chris (Emma's dad) (38:38)

So you have somebody else that builds your apps, Right, Scott?

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (38:40)

So, all right, so I'm on GitHub. I have trio Loop follow. So do I click on that on the left side?

Chris (Emma's dad) (38:46)

I don't know if Loop follow is loop Caregiver. Loop follow is another one that sort of is like a more advanced follow. It like dexcom Follow. But it also gives you POD info.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (38:56)

Yeah, that's the one I'm using because I don't see anything else there. So it might be.

Chris (Emma's dad) (38:59)

It might be similar. So, I mean, I assume. Yeah, that would be it. And then you'd go into that repo.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (39:04)

Okay, Use English, go into the.

Chris (Emma's dad) (39:06)

Okay. Are you signed in to get it?

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (39:08)

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm looking at it right now.

Chris (Emma's dad) (39:10)

Okay, so if you're into the repo, once you're in there, there should. The repo is the thing. So if you click on the name loop, follow, bring you to sort of a landing page. And then you should have something like.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (39:22)

Sync fork or I see sync fork.

Chris (Emma's dad) (39:24)

Yep. So you want to sync the fork.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (39:27)

This branch is not behind the upstream.

Chris (Emma's dad) (39:29)

Oh, good. So it's already. It's already done, which is cool.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (39:31)

Okay.

Chris (Emma's dad) (39:32)

And then somewhere there's an Actions tab. You'd click on Actions.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (39:36)

Somewhere there's an actions tab. I see it. Hold on a second. I appreciate this, by the way.

Chris (Emma's dad) (39:41)

Yeah, of course. No problem.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (39:42)

All right. Like, build loop, follow main is green, but a lot of stuff is red in the past. But the latest one from a couple days ago is green, so check mark.

Chris (Emma's dad) (39:56)

So that's good. Now the question is the way that loop, the way that I have it set up anyway, I think it's the default configuration is that it'll do an auto build. So does it say, like, build loop or whatever the app is to say scheduled?

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (40:10)

Yes.

Chris (Emma's dad) (40:11)

Okay, so with the way that it works for ours, we have to manually build to actually deploy the new version of the app. So if. If that number four action succeeded last time, you should be able to just click on that.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (40:24)

That.

Chris (Emma's dad) (40:25)

That action, and then click run.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (40:28)

So where it says build loop, follow main, that's the only thing it's highlighted to click on or main I can click on. Those are the two things that are clickable.

Chris (Emma's dad) (40:35)

Okay, is there anywhere that says, like.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (40:37)

Run, there's view, workflow, file, delete, workflow, run. Those are the clickable things. Okay, let me click on this and.

Chris (Emma's dad) (40:44)

See what run that. That should be it.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (40:48)

Why is everything so small? That wasn't nice. I clicked on something. Rerun all Jobs.

Chris (Emma's dad) (40:55)

Yeah.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (40:56)

Yeah.

Chris (Emma's dad) (40:56)

All right, so normally, with the way I have it set up, if you do a manual run, that's the trigger that says to actually deploy the application to test flight. And so if that all succeeds, you know, half an hour or so after the build is complete, you should get an email.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (41:13)

Okay. And then do you click on something in the email?

Chris (Emma's dad) (41:16)

Nope. That's it. You'll get an email from Test Flight saying your Test Flight apps are updated. And then if you go into Test Flight, right beside the app, it'll say update.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (41:23)

Okay. Yeah, I just saw it run it now it's queued. It's actually doing a lot here. And by a lot, I mean there's things flashing and spinning.

Chris (Emma's dad) (41:31)

Good. So flashy spinny things. And then as long as they're all green at the end, that hopefully will get that working for you.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (41:37)

Okay, can we pivot a little bit here? So no.

Chris (Emma's dad) (41:40)

Yeah, please.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (41:41)

Like you said, when we set your daughter up to record, you and I chatted for a couple of minutes beforehand.

Chris (Emma's dad) (41:45)

Yeah.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (41:46)

And I was probably talking about some of the stuff about AI that I'm excited about for healthcare and maybe for the podcast, too. Did you see that the other day, ChatGPT released a browser called Atlas?

Chris (Emma's dad) (42:03)

No, I did not.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (42:04)

I mean, technology in general, like, you have to pick a point to jump in. Right. You know what I mean? And there's times where you're just like, I want to know all about this. I think this is going to be cool. I can't wait to find out. And there's times when you're like, you know what? I'm going to wait. Something else is going to happen. I'm wondering if this isn't the something else. So a browser with an AI sidebar in it that makes it feel like to me, and I've only watched the first overview of how it works, but it makes it feel to me that you can go to a website and then have ChatGPT start talking, like looking directly at the website very closely while you're there. And I'm thinking that most of the problems that I've imagined being alleviated for people, I think this might take care of a lot of it.

Chris (Emma's dad) (42:53)

Oh, wow.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (42:54)

Yeah. And I'm still just beginning to dig into it, really. So it's be unfair, but have the thing set up on the Circle group, which I don't have a lot of people in on purpose. Right. They have like an agent in there. And you can load all the transcripts into the podcast and the agent, you can ask the agent a question. It does its best to go into the transcripts and pull out answers, et cetera. But one of the things it does that really excites me and this weekend, actually, while I was away, was a great example of why I had a woman contact me and ask me if it would be okay if she translated some of the transcripts of the podcast. Into Vietnamese so that she could, so she could share it in a local community, you know. And I was like, yeah, that's, that's fine. But if you go to that circle group and type a question into the agent in Vietnamese, it answers you in Vietnamese and every other language you can imagine. So I've been talking for five, six years about like, oh, we might have to pay voice actors to remake the episodes and like, and that's financially impossible for me but also like technically difficult. Right, because you're going to just have people reading and it's going to sound terrible and you know, what are you going to do and who's going to pay for it and add it all together. And I don't speak the languages so I can't QC anything. And just a really kind of a big mess. I think this is going to fill this in.

Chris (Emma's dad) (44:17)

Absolutely. We have something similar for work now where we can enable a translator and we have meetings where people are speaking different languages, you know, Japanese and English etc. And it just real time translates back and forth in. And it sounds like the person's voice who's speaking it in the other language.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (44:32)

Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

Chris (Emma's dad) (44:34)

Oh, it's amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (44:36)

Yeah, I swear. I think it's getting super close. I also understand the rest of it. Like if you want to be social with me, I'll. I could yell and scream about all the power this is going to take and everything else too. Like I, I know, you know, I'm not unaware of the problems. I assume I'm not going to get in front of them and I'm trying to figure out ways for this to help people. So I just went to my website and I opened up, I just downloaded the browser, this is my first time using it. And I clicked on the Chat GPT button in the top right. It opens up basically like a mini window inside of the browser. I said, what is episode 1600 like about? Oh, it says into the Woods features 10 year old Emma who shares her life living with type 1 diabetes. Everything from gymnastics to MMA carb counting at school and even how did she spotted her cousin's diagnosis? That's just giving me something that's written on the page. Then it says if you'd like I could pull a full transcript. So pull transcript. Let's see what happens there. It's a little slow right now, but it's their first version so I'm not overtly concerned about that. And we'll have to see what happens as it opens up. So I Guess my question is, where do you see AI in service of diabetes? How do you think it might do that in the future?

Chris (Emma's dad) (45:49)

Oh yeah. I mean, with the way that it learns, it should be able to be able to look at your insulin delivery, your carb intake and any number of other variables and combine that with things like Apple health and other metrics. And at some point it should be pretty good at just doing what we do because we're just making decisions based on the data that we see. Right. Like as humans. So this will definitely be able to do something very similar. I mean, just watching, seeing what it does in, in my everyday use of it for work and, and everything else in my personal life, it's incredible. So thinking about how that might apply to diabetes, I mean, I talked to Emma about it pretty frequently. Like, I think it's hopefully going to reduce her mental load a significant amount before she's at the age where she's going to have to, you know, take more of it on.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (46:40)

Yeah. Now, I saw somebody online the other day asking a question and they were clearly just trying to get other people's opinions, but they had gone to ChatGPT and had a, a conversation about something about diabetes that they did, they didn't understand. And I browsed it really quickly and I thought, I think this thing gave her a rock solid answer and you know, she was able to ask follow up questions, which I think is maybe where that separates you from Google a little bit. Like you asked the first question, you get an answer back and you might have more questions but it's hard to know then where to go from there. And then people came in and they were like, this seems reasonable to me. And people were interested in it too. So it's gotta be coming a little bit. But I don't know how long till regular people who aren't, you know what I mean, digging into stuff like this, figure it out because if you're online you think everybody's doing this, but that's certainly not the case. Right?

Chris (Emma's dad) (47:31)

Yeah, absolutely.

Host (likely Dan or a similar Juice Box Podcast host) (47:32)

How do you use it at work where the translator helps? Again, This episode was too good to cut anything out of, but too long to make just one episode. So this is part one. Make sure you go find part two. Right now. It's going to be the next episode in your feedback. Foreign. I'd like to remind you again about the mini Med 780G automated insulin delivery system, which of course anticipates, adjusts and corrects every 5 minutes, 24 7. It works around the clock so you can focus on what matters. The Juice Box community knows the importance of using technology to simplify managing diabetes. To learn more about how you can to spend less time and effort managing your diabetes, Visit my link medtronicdiabetes.com Juicebox I'd like to thank the blood glucose meter that my daughter carries, the Contour Next Gen Blood Glucose Meter. Learn more and get started today@contornext.com juicebox and don't forget, you may be paying more through your insurance right now for the meter you have. Then you would pay for the Contour Next gen in cash. There are links in the show notes of the audio app you're listening in right now and links@juiceboxpodcast.com to contour and all of the sponsors. Auld Lang Syne says to forget old acquaintances, but honestly, I'm grateful for every one of you that keeps showing up. Thank you so much for listening. Here's to a fantastic 2026. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of the Juice Box Podcast. Check out my Algorithm Pumping series to help you make sense of automated insulin delivery systems like Omnipod, Five Loop, Medtronic 780G Twist, Tandem Control IQ and much more. Each episode will dive into the setup, features and real world usage tips that can transform your daily type 1 diabetes management. We cut through the jargon, share personal experiences and show you how these algorithms can simplify and streamline your care. If you're curious about automated insulin pumping, go find the Algorithm Pumping series in the Juice Box podcast easiest way juiceboxpodcast.com and go up into the menu. Click on Series and it'll be right there. If you're looking for community around type 1 diabetes, check out the Juice Box Podcast. Private Facebook Group juice box podcast type 1 diabetes but everybody is welcome. Type 1 type 2 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 Juice Box podcast type 1 diabetes on Facebook. If you have a podcast and you need a fantastic editor, you want Rob from Wrong way Recording Listen. Truth be told, I'm like 20% smarter. When Rob edits me, he takes out all the gaps of time. And when I go and stuff like that and it just, I don't know man. I listen back and I'm like why do I sound smarter? And then I remember because I did one smart thing. I hired Rob at wrongwayrecording com.