Episode 1: Welcome to This is Type 1!

Welcome to This is Type 1: Real life type one diabetes with your hosts, Colleen and Jesse. I'm Colleen Mitchell and I've had type one diabetes for 23 years. By day, I'm a process analyst in the power industry and by night I'm an author, blogger, and virtual assistant. I'm passionate about type one diabetes education and showing others that this disease doesn't define me.

I'm Jesse Tuggey. I've had type one for seven years. I love hiking and painting and I'm looking forward to working as an engineer after college. My diagnosis has inspired me to take control of my future and learn everything I can about it.

Each week on the show we'll talk about real life with type one diabetes. Bring on cool people with connections to type one and above all encourage you to understand that this disease doesn't have to hold you back. This isn't medical advice. This is life with type one. Post production Colleen here with a brief interruption. I want it to cover a few things we forgot to mention when we recorded this. We're still learning the ins and outs of podcasting together, so please bear with us as we undertake this new and exciting adventure. I wanted to explain how this podcast ties in with my blog, Inspired Forward. A quick overview for those who aren't aware, Inspired Forward is my blog and business website where I write about mental health, self-development, lifestyle, and type one diabetes. Unsurprisingly, it's that last topic that connects the blog and the podcast together.

If learning about mental health, self-improvement, and my take on lifestyle sound interesting to you, please head over to www.inspiredforward.com to take a look around and sign up for regular emails. Even though I only have a handful of blog posts about type one diabetes up at the moment, I enjoy talking about diabetes much more than practically anything else. A lot of my personal growth and self-development comes from lessons I learned dealing with diabetes and the effects it has on my life. Mental health in particular is inextricably linked to dealing with type one and there are a lot of lifestyle choices that it influences as well. I've never understood why some people want to hide their diabetes as if it's something to be ashamed of. Chances are if you know me in real life, you know I have diabetes. It's not something I'm quiet about because it's such a huge part of my life and the lives of my family and friends.

It made sense to undertake this venture and promote education and what it looks like day to day for those of us living with an incurable disease. And now back to the episode. So hello everyone. Welcome to episode one. I'm actually so excited to be starting this podcast with my pseudo daughter, Jessie. We just want to give a quick overview of who we are, what we're doing. You know all that jazz. We're both diabetics. I've had diabetes for 23 years, Jessie's had it for seven so combined we have over 30 years of experience dealing with this thing.

We've both live in with it. We've got a lot of knowledge and experience. Colleen more than I do 'cause she's had it for longer and.

So I've had 20—23 years of experience with this. Um, 30 plus combined experience with type one diabetes and I've always been passionate about talking about diabetes.I seize the opportunity to talk about it whenever I can. I have on my cubicle at work, I actually have the words written, "I have type one diabetes" on my whiteboard and it prompts discussions when coworkers walk past. I kinda came up with the idea of this podcast because not many people really seem to know about type one diabetes. There's a lot of questions about it. There's a lot of misconceptions about it. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misconceptions in the medical world. We both go to a diabetes camp every year and the nutritionists in particular I think are influencing the next generation of type one diabetics in a way that's not that great because I've learned from my own experience with food that food is really a driver for good blood sugars for type one diabetics.

So what I see for this podcast is it's real life and why not talk about it as type one diabetics?What do you think, Jessie?

I agree with you completely. I think that it's important that we do talk about this stuff and I believe that there's a lot of misconceptions about being diabetic and you know, living with diabetes to where it's very extorted nowadays and I think it's good to be part of an educational movement to make sure people actually know what they're talking about rather than just assuming some stuff.

And not just for non-diabetics. This happens a lot with like type one diabetics. So remember when we came over for dinner and I mentioned that there is no essential carbs and that just kind of blew your mind, which was interesting to me that I keep learning about diabetes every day and I've had it for 23 years. So there's always something new to learn.

Right. And I was always taught that diabetes you had to eat carbs no matter what. Like you can't just eat a salad with bacon in it. Like you had to have a bread or like a starch with it to where you had to eat a carb every meal.

I think this podcast is really aimed toward younger type one diabetics. I think from teens to early twenties, mid twenties or if you're a diabetic and you have no idea what's going on in your life, if you have questions, we want to try to answer those. And it's for families of type one diabetics, people who have this in their lives. But it's not, theirs exactly, I mean it's for people who want to learn more and want something accessible, something that it shows what it looks like to have type one diabetes in the real world.

Yeah. And it's definitely for people who want to learn more to like, not even just family or just other diabetics. Like for friends too. This is really important. And like people who just want to learn more.

Yeah. Education itself is important. And I don't think many people are taking this initiative to educate people about type one diabetes.

Right.

So kind of as part of this podcast, we have a few segments planned and we're going to jump in with, um, our first segment, which is a win of the week. And Jesse, you have a win of the week.

Yeah. So my diabetic win of the week was that I was looking ahead for when my site needs to be changed out. So like coming over to your house and spending the night, I realized I only had like 20 units left this mid-afternoon. I was like, hold up, I gotta change this out just in case, you know, being prepared is huge with diabetes.

So my win of the week, I actually disagreed with my sensor data a couple mornings ago when I woke up, it's my Dexcom G6 told me that my number was 44 and going down and I didn't feel like I was actually 44 and going down. So I tested my blood sugar and my meter said I was 95 but I've thought maybe I had had some dust from the Smarties I in the middle of the night and it was a little, maybe a little artificially high. And so I tested again after cleaning my finger and I was actually like 71 so I still wasn't as low as my, my Dexcom said I was, but I was still lower than I should have been. But I'm really glad I didn't agree with my sensor data because if I'd had like three rolls of Smarties then I would've gone high instead of just peaking at like 150 and coming back down.

Right. And then also as another part, since we have our wins, we also have to have our, you know, our ups and downs with diabetes. So we also have a segment called our diabetes fails of the week, which, you know, they happen, you can't really avoid some stuff that happened. Like you forget something or oh I didn't change out my sensor, or oh, I didn't plan for this or whatever. So we have a segment for diabetic fails of the week.

So my fail of the week, actually it was a couple of weeks ago, right after a Panther Camp, which is, our summer camp for type one diabetics. It's exhausting. It's—it's a week long. But it's so much fun and I have a time of my life, but it also throws me off my routines. And so when I shower, I take my pump off and shove it underneath the pillow so that it can charge and not make noise and wake my husband up. And then I forgot to lay my clothes out on the bed, which I usually do. So after I got out of the shower, I got dressed and we went to church and I completely forgot my pump. It was just sitting there chilling underneath my pillow. The cat might've played with my tubing a little bit, but you know, and I realize this towards the end of the service when I was just kind of thinking maybe I should check my pump, um, and realized it wasn't on me.

My Dexcom G6 will still transmit my blood sugar to my phone. So I knew what my blood sugar was and that wasn't a problem. The problem was that I didn't have any insulin going in, but since I eat a low carb diet, my blood sugars had been pretty flat and steady all morning and they were just, just starting to creep up. And so that was the point where I was like, okay, we need to go home, we have to skip rock climbing. And right at the end of the service we just left and drove home and I plugged my pump in and bolused for the missed basal.

Yup it happens.

It was the first time I've forgotten my pump like that. So definitely lessons learned, have routines in place and try not to deviate from them because you might end up leaving your pump somewhere you don't want to leave it.

Yeah, I have a diabetic failed this week. Very similar to that actually to where my boyfriend just got a new job and so I was like, well we should go visit him. Like we should go say hi. You know, really fast. And so we got there and I realized I had to calibrate my sensor to my pump and I was looking for my kit and I couldn't find it and I realized I had left it at home. So I was fine because I knew where I was at before I left and I knew whereabout my blood sugar was. And it was only like a five minute car ride from my house. So I wasn't too concerned. But you know, I still left my meter at home and on the car ride home I got looks from both my mom who is just like, you can't do this.

And my boyfriend too was also like, Jessica, don't do this. We worry about you. So.

Pro tip, never leave your kit at home.

Don't do that.

Yeah, it's a, it's always a good idea to have um, a meter kit, uh, extra insulin, syringes, extra supplies in whatever bag you're taking with you. Even if you switch bags, it's a good idea to move everything over or have multiple sets. So Jesse, you have a diabetes hack for us.

Yes, I do. So what I do is, since I have the Medtronic pump, I have—sites are really easily changeable and they're easy to switch from like an old site to a new site. And so my hack is, is that if you're changing out your site, leave your old site on for a couple of days. If it looks okay to stay on, if it looks like it's gonna be okay for another extra day while you have your new site in and make sure it's working and you know it's really good to have like that extra backup just in case like one rips off or you know, one doesn't work, then you have that spare.

And that's a, that's a good idea. Especially if you have that Medtronic pump. Uh, I have the tandem t:Slim pump and um, with that one, once I get to the last day of the site, which is about day three, uh, the site itself becomes less effective. And so I can't do that with the t:Slim pumps unfortunately. But with Medtronic I could work that reservoir down to zero and that site was still good for another day or two after the three days were up.

Yeah.

So that's actually it for this episode of This is Type One. You can find the show notes at www.inspiredforward.com/episode1 and if you have an idea for an upcoming episode, please leave us a comment there. I'm on social media as @inspiredforward, and our email is colleen@inspiredforward.com

And I am on Instagram @JJ_crystalkat.

Thank you so much for listening to This is Type One. Please leave us a review on iTunes since that helps other people find us, and if you'd like to, please share us with your friends.

Yeah. And be sure to listen to our next episode where we will be talking about both of our diabetic stories. And also we have a question of like our episode question this week would be, what's your relationship to diabetes? Are you diabetic yourself? Do you know someone with diabetes? Are you related? Yeah, stay tuned for that.

Yeah. Thank you.