Latest / The Healthy Diabetic / #148: The Role of Physical Activity in Diabetes - Azul Cook

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#148: The Role of Physical Activity in Diabetes - Azul Cook · The Healthy Diabetic

• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I always tell people to think of your traditional summer camp.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Right, we do canoeing, we do high ropes, fishing, archery, arts and crafts.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: We have a pool.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: You play every sport under the sun, dr Dodgeball, every game that you play at your traditional camp.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: You know we do that at camp.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: But everybody there has diabetes, which is really awesome.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Everybody understands, full pun intended, the highs and the lows of the life that you're living with and is there to support you and educate you to help manage that better.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: They brought out the needle the first time that I was going to have to get an injection and I noped that needle so hard out of the nurse's hand that they got stuck in the wall.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: But I do think that probably the biggest thing that has helped me in managing my diabetes getting into better shape, all of that really boils down just being disciplined, Like being able to say this is the outcome that I want and the steps to get there are X, Y and Z, so I'm going to do X, Y and Z.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Welcome back.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: This is episode number 148 of the Healthy Diabetic Podcast.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: As always, before we get started, please remember that nothing that you hear on this podcast should be considered medical advice or otherwise.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Please always consult your medical team before making changes to your diabetes management.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Okay, let's jump right in here.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: I am so excited about this.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: You guys know I've been talking about Camp Hamway for the past couple of weeks.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: I had the opportunity if you don't know, I've had a really good opportunity to go to Camp Hamway.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: This is a camp that is your typical, like your typical day camp, overnight camp.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Like all of the kids there have diabetes I would say probably 99% of the kids there have diabetes, because there are some kids that go with their friends or go with their siblings that don't have diabetes.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: And you're actually going to hear from a dynamic duo sister and brother, one with diabetes and one without diabetes in this series.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: But this is going to be an incredible series.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: This is the first episode of this series, of what I am calling the Camp Hamway series, and it is going to entail so many different conversations, from my time at camp this year speaking to a lot of the kids and my time speaking to some of the caregivers of some of the kids that are going to end up coming on to the show to talk about their journey as caregivers and as parents of diabetics and their experience with dropping their kid off at camp and picking their kid up.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: We are also going to hear a lot of some conversations, or a lot of conversations with staff members, with the medical personnel.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: Maybe even we can get some of the dietary staff on the show, just to really give us a really fine tune, all-encompassing idea of what this amazing organization is.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: So I am really excited about this first episode.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: I got to sit down with Azul Cook.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: He is going to kick off our series and Azul is just an incredible individual a young buck, as I like to call him, but just filled with so much knowledge.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: He really is someone that has been able to figure out diabetes and, just like a lot of us, he did not start out that way.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: So we are going to really hear about his story today.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: We are going to hear about his diagnosis story.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: We are going to hear about his things that happened to him at the beginning of diagnosis.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: We are going to hear from him about his time at camp, as a camper and his time as also a counselor, so I am excited about this.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: This is going to be a great episode.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: If you are part of the Campanway family, you are going to really really like this episode.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: If you are not, I hope you join the Campanway family in the future, but this is going to give you a really good understanding of why I am so excited about this organization.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: So, without further ado, let's get with Azul Cook.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: The orientation weekend before the first weekend or before the first week of camp is a lot of getting the campground set up.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So there is a giant storage unit that we make a little line to help unpack.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: It is a really fun bonding moment that everyone hates, and then basically the exact opposite thing happens at the end of junior week, where we get everything that we have put all over the place and we pack it up and we put it away and we have to make sure that the entire campground is clean and finished before anyone is allowed to head home.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: So it is a great incentive for people to move and work really quickly.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because I remember that at staff training, like then, we are all talking about it and Anthony is, like you know, making the note of no one leaves after each week until you are dismissed, until everything is cleaned up, and I am just like, oh shit, okay.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I am just preparing myself to stay super freaking late on Saturday when the campers are like getting picked up by no later than 12pm and it really was like a seamless process going into like that.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: After that second week it was like I didn't have to do anything.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: That you're right.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Actually the first week the check-in was pretty smooth, but it still had that like hey, you're at camp, you haven't been at camp for a year, let's talk about that.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: There was that like newness to it, but because for senior week two the half of the kids were already there, there was a lot less of that like oh, it's camp, what's going to happen, Like exciting, exciting.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: It was more like okay, we're here, Like we know the drill.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, interesting, interesting.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: Well, man, it was a fun experience, a really fun experience.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: I had a blast.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: I'll definitely do it again next year, at least for one week.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: But it was a good experience.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Some things that I was like questioning is like, why are things happening this way?
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Things from the physical aspect and the coaches aspect of saying to myself what the heck is that?
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but for the most part, it was an amazing experience, an incredible experience.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I'm really glad to hear that actually, camp has been a really big part of a lot of people's lives, myself included, so it's just always really cool to hear about how someone else has entered into that scene and then just seen more of that same magic.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: And you even got a week.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: That was pretty crazy, because halfway through we just lost our water, and so then we had a little bit of a race against the clock trying to figure out how to fix the water before we had to start sending out the home, and I didn't even think that was a big deal.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Like I was like not, I guess it could have turned into a pretty bad situation, but thank God it didn't.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: But I didn't even think that was.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: It was like that big of a deal Even to the extent of the first two nights of it, like just pouring down rain and us not being able to do evening activities.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a very weird week in terms of the relationship to water, but I actually I do think I can see how having just no running water on campgrounds could be a big problem, especially with how hot that Thursday was.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like literally I was leading archery for one of the activities and we ended up pivoting entirely away from archery to indoor board games because it was too hot.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: So having no water in a situation like that would have been a very, very bad hand to have to do to play.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: But our leadership team did a pretty good job of getting a lot of water all over the place almost immediately.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they did a deal and Dylan and they all did a great job, 100% For sure, okay, well, let's dive into you, man.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: We talked a little bit about camp.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: We got to catch up a little bit.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: It's been what?
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: Three weeks since I saw you, just about, just about.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: Well, let's dive into you, because I was really bummed that last year we couldn't I couldn't release a lot of the episodes that we got to record last year at camp in Graham.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: So I'm glad that I got to actually get you on for like a real in depth look at Azul's life with diabetes and Azul's life as a camp counselor and a camper.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: So let's dive into this man.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: Tell us your diagnosis story, tell us what, how that has been going for you, and you are someone that has it figured out and I would love to know, like, how that process happened for you, how you really just really figured out diabetes.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: So it didn't happen immediately, arguably it happened in a few very distinct phases of my life.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I was diagnosed in third grade.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: This was 2011,.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I think beginning of the school year.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: I don't remember a ton of the details around it too greatly, but I do know that in my like in my back to school picture you could see that I was just like almost emaciated, like I was bone skinny and you like my skull was imprinting on my face and my back to school pictures.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: It was crazy.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: And a couple of weeks into the school year I went to the doctor because I had been wetting the bed and my mom had been, had had seen that and started to get worried about something having happened.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: So we go to the doctor and they're like, yeah, you have diabetes, like just straight up.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: And so we go to the hospital, as one does when they are freshly diagnosed with diabetes, and I remember I got an IV, they did all the like the preop stuff.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: And then, as I got like more actually into like sitting in the hospital room, they brought out the needle the first time that I was going to have to get an injection and I noped that needle so hard out of the nurse's hand that it got stuck in the wall.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was absolutely just not having it, and that, I think, was the kickoff into a multi year phase of me simply trying to ignore the fact that I had diabetes.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: So I was doing all this stuff, like trying to like get up at midnight, to like have a snack and then not take insulin.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I would be like Halloween and I'd be eating my candy in between, like walking to the house that I had just gotten to and the house that I was going to next, like all the stuff.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, my body did not like that and my blood sugars were super high all the time, and my mom and my endo were trying to get ahead of that, and so they had me do a log, which I simply just didn't do.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: I would write random numbers.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I would try and get smart with it too.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Like I would write like 211, 289, oh, 175.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: So it looked like I wasn't being perfect, because I knew that if I had like 111, 115, 131 every day for a week, that would raise some eyebrows and then that lasted probably longer than it should have, for sure.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: But around eighth grade, I want to say, I entered a different phase of my life I started wearing suits every day.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: I don't exactly know why.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I was a weird kid, but like full three piece suit and I think, for whatever reason I just I used that as like a form of stability and self-expression.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: When I was like 13, 14, whatever no-transcript I would wear these suits and I really liked it.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I felt like it was a big part of my identity and, as that happened, I ended up taking better care of myself, not like a crazy 180, but like I would check my blood sugars, I would carb count, like I would do the actual, I would start doing the steps to be like a real healthy diabetic.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: You know roll credits.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I said the name of the show, um.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: So mad props, man mad props.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And oh I was.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out ways to work it in all day, um but so, and then, once that happened, they got to high school and high school I became more of like a regular person.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I stopped wearing suits after a little while, had a relatively average, I would say, relationship with my diabetes If I mean for a 15, 16 year old, like I would do this stuff.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: But I wasn't like, oh no, my blood sugar is in two, my blood sugar is 230.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I need to change that.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, okay, I'm high, I'll take some insulin and then keep eating Like who gives a shit.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And then, in a weird moment for my life actually it was the it was the New Year's Eve, new Year's Day of my freshman year of college.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: That was two years ago about at this point, and I had just decided that I wanted to start working out Like I was like you know what it's a New Year's resolution.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start working out.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I wanna go to the gym when I get back to school, all that fun stuff.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Honestly, at the outset I assumed I would make it a week and then be back to eating two things of ramen at one in the morning, yeah.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: But it stuck and I kept working out and I started out doing a workout three times a week and then graduated to five and, as that happened somewhere along the way, my body just got really, really sensitive to insulin.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: So the amount of insulin that I would take for any meal would be drastically reduced.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: I mean drastically reduced.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: I would probably, let's say I'm 16 and I ate for dinner a hot pocket and a bowl of chips, I don't know I would take somewhere in the ballpark of 15 units of insulin for that.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Now I don't eat stuff like that anymore, but I mean you can attest to this.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: At camp.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: We have a pretty varied meal plan.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: We have a lot of different stuff that we go through Carbs, protein, anything like that.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: In the weeks that I was at camp, for any meal, I never took more than two or three units of insulin at a time and I still ran low.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So I think really the biggest secret to my success is just that I made a lot of dietary and exercise-based changes in my life and my body just ran with that.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: And then, because I was so used to taking like 10, 15 units of insulin per meal and suddenly I would do that and my blood sugars would drop to 40 for three hours, I had to just whittle my way up to being able to figure out okay, I can take this much insulin and I won't pass out in the middle of a dining room.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an interesting thing because I was even thinking about watching the campers, just because this is the way I work, like just watching the campers, blood sugars and especially just my cabin of like what their blood sugars were doing after specific meals Because I was taking mental notes.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's a lot of carbohydrate in one sitting.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: I'm curious what's about to happen in the next two to three hours and with the extensive amounts of activity at camp that happens.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of these kids were either staying in range or going low, and so it's like one of those things that I think about with diabetes.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: It's like one of the missing linchpins and that's one pre-balling thing and learning that skill, but also the exercise piece, the activity piece and how powerful that can be for one's insulin sensitivity.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wholeheartedly agree.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: When I started working out and saw that insulin sensitivity just jump up, the way that I thought about my diabetes and the way that and the relationship that I had with it, I think changed a lot and a really positive way.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And so being able to be at camp and see all of these campers they're running around and they're not really processing the fact that they're being more active- but, trying to be there saying, hey, if you keep running around, your blood sugar tends to stay in this block that we tend to like it at and being able to encourage them to get a little bit more active, to try and do more physically-based things like not this year but last year at camp it was during junior week I had made a deal with my cabin and these were maybe seven, eight, nine-year-olds, somewhere in that range.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: They had seen me working out during one of my off periods and they were joking about how they would be able to do it better than me.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And so I was like well, hey, you know what, we'll pick an exercise and if you can do more of it than I can, or for longer, then I'll buy you a soda, because at camp we use sodas as an incentive for good behavior or good performance or whatever.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: And so, fast forward to Friday, during the all camp swim, I had probably nine or 10 campers all circled around me as we were planking and I had campers really trying to out-plank me, and that was a great moment for me because I learned that I could do a five-minute plank, because there was a camper who literally got to four minutes and 30 seconds with just no prep time.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I don't think this kid had ever done a plank before in his life.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: He just strolled out onto the grass and did it, but there was also a push-up competition, there was a ton of stuff and I really liked being able to see those campers engage with physical activity so positively, because I think with diabetes and you'll probably be able to attest to this there's a large narrative around oh, I can't do it, I'm a diabetic, I can't go run the mile, I'll go low, or like oh, my blood sugar's too high, I can't do X or whatever it is.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: So being able to kind of encourage campers and kids to be able to break free of those limiting stereotypes is a really great thing.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that you bring that up because, as you're telling that story, I'm thinking about all the conversations that I've ever had of someone making the excuse that they can't do something, not because they actually believe they can't do it, but because someone else told them that they couldn't do it and then I think that becomes the stigmatism around I can't do it because I'm a diabetic, or I can't do it.
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: And this is why and I love that you bring that up, because it's such a powerful thing and I hate when I hear those stories come out of people's narrative I hate, that because it's not because they can't do it, it's because they believe they can't do it because someone else told them they couldn't do it a doctor, a friend, someone else with diabetes, whatever it is, and it's just.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: I love that you brought that up.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: My grandfather.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: He is diabetic as well and he was diagnosed, I wanna say, somewhere around the mid-70s, and in a weird move for the bedside manner, the doctor who diagnosed him actually said the words that he would probably not live to see his kids graduate high school.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I cannot even imagine being I think my grandfather was 14 at this point and having this new scary disease that you have to deal with and having the doctor tell you that you're basically you're standing there with one foot already in the grave.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: That's insane.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: Happens every day.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Every day, a diagnosis every all the time.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: And it is a message to all medical professionals who we need.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: We need them in our life, we need them on our team.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: But it's a 100% message to every medical professional that you have to come at your patients with empathy, compassion and kindness.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: You cannot come at it with your own personal bias and I just I think that's super powerful because I keep hearing this narrative around the medical medical professionals coming at us with that of, like you only have this much to live, and it happens with cancer too Like it's just a crazy.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: It's a crazy thing with me that I hate hearing those narratives come out of people's mouth.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: It's just so crazy to me.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: Like why, if I'm a medical professional and even as a coach and I think this person's BSing me, I'm gonna call them out on their BS, but I'm not going to tell them you'll never accomplish what you want to accomplish.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: That would never come out of my mouth, because it's my job to help them realize how to get there and to help them get there, not the other way around.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: And that's just true in life also.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: I cannot imagine in a situation where I would want to, instead of like pitch a solution, just tell someone that they're wrong.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: And I understand that.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Like there are times when you're in a bad mood, you have a bad day, we say shit.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: But if I were in a situation where I was aware that the next words out of my mouth were going to be substantially like impactful to whoever they're gonna be heard by, I would try and choose my words carefully.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't try and throw out like yeah, you got this thing.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: It's probably gonna beat you, but fingers crossed, that's just so unhelpful.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so unhelpful and it's to me.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: When I hear those stories and those narratives, I'm like, okay, it's time to fire that person and go find someone else.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: It's time to never talk to that person again, ever, because they are not helping your cause.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: That's I mean.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: If it works, it works, and sometimes getting chopped is the best way to deal with something I don't know.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: I mean it's funny that you say that, because I've heard that before.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: I've heard.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: I've been in front of endos that are pediatric that say that like that they take that approach with kids.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: That like the fear tactic of like, oh well, if this doesn't have you, don't do this, this is what's gonna happen Like you could hurt you, you know you could die.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: Like, and maybe with some personalities that will work.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: But I would say at least 70, 80% of the population that's probably a high number, but so many, so much of the population.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: That doesn't work.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: That does not work.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I would not hear hey, you might die doing this or dealing with this.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't hear that.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly feel motivated to like do it better.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: Yes, you would now though.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I mean I would, but if you know, you would.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I would, because I know who I am.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I'm the kind of person who, like I, teach myself how to do inverted push-ups and just like, do weird shit while I'm trying to work at summer camp.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: But for someone who's like a younger adult, like teenager, adolescent, whatever, I feel like those are the kinds of things that I make this joke.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: But like that you hear when you're trying to fall asleep at night, randomly when you're 30.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Like just those kinds of automatic negative thoughts.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: That's how they start.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, 100%, I do.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: I brought up.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: You wouldn't do that, though.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: Now, because I think it's also an important piece to recognize that, looking at where you started.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: If you would have heard that at the very beginning, when you started, maybe you would have had those negative thoughts, but now, because you're in such a good place with diabetes and such a good place with yourself, like you can tune that out and make that into a very powerful thing to take a step forward instead of take a step back.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: You're right.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of feel awkward sometimes being like, oh yeah, I do a good job at things.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I just I don't know, I don't know why, but I do think that probably the biggest thing that has helped me in managing my diabetes, getting into better shape, all of that really boils down just being disciplined, like being able to say this is the outcome that I want, and the steps to get there are X, y and Z.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to do X, y and Z.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go to the gym every day it's snowing or raining and it's like negative 15 degrees.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'm still going to go to the gym, I'm still going to eat, write, whatever.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: And I think that is how you get into the mindset to be able to kind of tune out all of those detrimental narratives.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Because when I'm, when I'm focusing on like what I know that I can do and what I have been doing, it's just not as important if someone else is telling me that they don't think I can, because if I know that I can, or at least I'm working on being able to that kind of supersedes whatever negativity is being thrown my way.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: Let's pivot here.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Sure, because we talked about, we talked about your diagnosis story, we talked a little bit about what's been the pivot point for you, or the, I guess, more like maybe the linchpin of, like how you're successful with diabetes, and it sounds like it's the main driver, has been the exercise piece for you how you're, you're, you're, knowing your success with diabetes.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: So I want to, I want to take a stab at, or talk about camp and like when did you get introduced to camp?
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Because you, I believe that you were a camper first, before a counselor.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know how, how did that process go?
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: How was your first year, two years as a camper, compared to in kind of looking at when you were a camper, compared to now being on the other side as being a staff member?
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Ooh, so I, my first summer as a camper was the summer after I was diagnosed.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: So I was diagnosed I want to say August 11th.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: So then that next summer, that next, I think June I went to a day camp that was, I was told by my mom, was going to be Camp Hamway, the stayover camp, where you're there for a full week and everyone there is diabetes.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize it until this last year when I worked at this camp.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I was sent to the day camp for the younger kids.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: So I was told that I was going to go ride horses and like shoot bows and arrows and like be at this camp for a week straight.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: And then I wasn't and I was like really salty about that as like a little 12 year old or whatever.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: And then it was actually the next year that I was sent to the correct version of the camp, camp Hamway, and I was a shithead.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, like I was probably one of the campers that a counselor would see on their cabin list on that Sunday before the campers got there and just go.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Oh shit, I don't remember this.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Like I it almost sounds untrue, but apparently when I was first or second year camper, there was a cat.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: That was just like kind of live in near the guy's side cabin.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: And I found the cat and I just chased it around the guy's side cabin saying that I was going to skin it.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know where I got that idea.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: I assume I thought it was funny.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: I do not think that anymore, but like, just like random stuff like that, and I would like that for a few summers.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: And actually right around the suit divide, when I started wearing suits and just doing diabetes more, I weaned my way out of the shithead phase and then I was my last, like four years as a camper.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I was a counselor favorite, like I was someone that they were like please, please do the CIT year, which is the program where a camper kind of graduates from being a camper and is working their way into being a full fledged staff member.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: And so I my scene going into my senior year.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: I was getting ready to do my CIT year and COVID happened, which was really fun, basically wrecked all of the plans for camp that year, but we were able to rally and we pivoted to an online virtual format, which I did work as a CIT and it went pretty well.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I mean as well as as an in-prompter online
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: camp during a global crisis can be, but it went pretty well.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, the next year I applied to be a staff member because that was how it works, and I actually got a call from my CIT director from the year before saying hey, we thought you did a great job last year.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Would you be willing to, or would you be interested?
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think I'm going to be in a lot of parentheses Pretty please, would you be interested in coming back to do your CIT year again?
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Which I was like ooh, sounds a little bit like I'm being held back.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: But Tom the director goes oh, no, no, no, we just we like you and we wanted to see if you wanted to want to have like an actual CIT year.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: That's interesting.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: There definitely was a learning curve going from camper to counselor, because you know, when you're a camper, you're there for you, it's your summer, you're doing the stuff, they're your activities.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: When you're a counselor, you're there to facilitate all of that.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: It's not about you anymore.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: But I went into the CIT real year kind of thinking that I was like the main character of camp, like I just felt like if there was a job that needed to be done, I was the one who was supposed to do it and, like with the CIT program, every year the CIT team makes a full on evening program that the camp plays through and during the planning process of that I ended up taking the reins for my entire group.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: I ended up giving them my notebook that I had all these like notes written down in, like rough drawings and stuff, and it got to the point where, like, my group didn't want me to leave to like go do other things because they didn't have the answers for what the activity we were planning was.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: So I ended up, like giving them my notebook and running off to do other stuff.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I lived my CIT year that year very like every man for himself kind of mentality, which is not the one team, one dream mantra that I try and follow now when I'm at camp.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: But then the year after that, my first like actual big boy year of camp, I'm going to get a paycheck, like I'm not, I'm not volunteering and or paying to work there, and that went pretty well.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: It was a pretty standard three weeks but it was like the finish line almost for me.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Once I had gotten into the senior weeks of camp, like as a camper, I knew that I wanted to be a counselor, like I knew that I had a very strong connection to the camp Hamway family.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Like my like, I actually started after my CIT years a white elephant gift exchange during winter.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: And I believe this last winter was our third year doing it, so like that I ended up starting like a pretty big yeah.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: And your decisions, like stuff like that.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: It was a really cool adjustment, although it did take a few years to get it 100 percent right.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: It's so interesting hearing the full circle, you know like, because I've talked to so many counselors that maybe weren't campers, or I've talked to so many counselors that were campers but didn't hear both sides of the story, and understanding and hearing like the whole story of like the whole evolution of camper to CIT to counselor, that's super cool man, that's super cool it's.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: It's a really, really cool thing to hear.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty fun experience.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: If you're a camper who's been a lifer, as we call them, who's just been there every year for as long as they've been diagnosed, we get.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: It gets the point where, whether you are staff or you're the camper, like people know you.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: People are like expecting to see you and so being able to see people grow up and go from like the, the kid to like the the caregiver is it always is a really fun experience to either be a part of or to watch happen from the sidelines.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, that's an interesting thought process because it's it's one of those things of you were you were the kid, then you were the student and now you are the where, the caregiver, and then watching, as you're the caregiver now watching the student or the camper grow up and now become the student, and those, those kids that right now are CITs.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: I'm sure you've seen them become, go from camper to CIT to now, hopefully, staff member.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, 100%.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: So this group, particularly like it was.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: That was the first moment where, like I had campers that had been like established campers underneath me that I was now seeing like rise up and join the ranks, which was fun.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's cool man.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: What?
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: What about the relationships?
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: Because I saw when I was there I mean this again, this is my first year but I saw so many relationships with staff members, with kids, with the CITs, and we know that relationship building, especially in the diabetes community, is so important for our overall health, our you know support systems, all that type of stuff.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Mm, hmm, and well, what do you mean?
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Like, just like, how is it?
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: the relationships that you've built right, the relationship you've built there and and the relationships with the staff members, relationships with you.
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: Know someone, even like Mike, who was a CIT you know was a CIT and like it is basically what two years behind you in the whole process.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Like long hair.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: So Mike and I actually were CITs our in the same year.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: We are concurrent in our tenure at camp, but it's funny that you bring him up because if we were to talk about relationships that I have built at camp, he is the first name that would come to my mind.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Nice Camp is a weird place because you're there for a week, two weeks recently, maybe three All in all not a long time to be in one place or around one group of people.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: But the annual nature of the camp and just the fact that, because everyone has diabetes, everyone is super, super close and camp as a location is, has the incredible potential to be a catalyst for these really, really strong relationships.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Hence me and Mike.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Mike and I are two people that we don't like hang out during the year.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: We have a Snap Street that's, I believe, 200 days long right now.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: We don't like text it's literally just the S, but when we're in the same room, without fail, we can always tell what the other is thinking, and not unlike that goofy like Disney Channel, like ha ha, like legitimately, when we have been cozy, there have been on so many occasions moments where we'll look at each other and say nothing and like communicate I'm going here or I'm doing X, or tell a dirty joke Like I cannot.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Our campers, by the end of each week that we've been paired up together, have thought that we are insane because we'll look at each other and just burst into laughter.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: But then we'll walk over to the other and verify that we did in fact think of the exact same joke and in the what nine years that we've been really close, I don't think we've ever actually misread each other once.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: So like that's how close relationships born at camp can be.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: I know Alyssa is another.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: She's just someone that I met when I was a staff member and she is another one of the people at camp that I would say have become really, really close and personal friends that I still just don't see almost ever.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, she lives in Georgia, I do not live there, and it's also interesting seeing how the camper dynamic plays into that as well, because I didn't think about it when I was a camper, because I didn't really see my counselors as like actual adult human beings.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: I saw them more as like props.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: But being a counselor and then talking to these campers every day and then seeing them the next year, like there are campers that I was unaware had been like waiting to see me when I was at camp, like they had like there were campers I didn't think that I knew super well but like when I heard, when I told them that I was their counselor for the week, it was like hands in the air, cheering, and so seeing that relationship grow as well is really really cool.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: For example, there was one camper that I had for the first time last year who was very shy at the outset, like just really didn't feel like they were gonna do well in the camp environment.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: But after a week of being able to talk to some kids their age and being able to talk to me and getting to bond with both of us, this camper ended up coming back this year and I did not see them go from one location to another without at least one person calling their name.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Like it was a really fun moment for me seeing them go from this really shy, non-community of kid and then in one year being this like star of the show who I kind of I'd gotten to see both sides of that coin, having been their counselor for two years, and that I think is probably the most enjoyable part of being a counselor for me actually.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: I like that man.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: What I was thinking about this as you were telling your story In terms of because this is a diabetes show what has been the most impactful thing that you've learned from camp with your diabetes, whether that's from when you were a camper, whether that's from when you were doing being a CIT and transitioning into being a staff member, what's been kind of the most impactful thing that you have learned?
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: that's kind of helped you on your journey, or what that's a good question and one that I actually am not certain that I have like a quick answer for.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: Nice, I stumped you good.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: I know that one thing that helped me pretty intensely was during a panel during a learning session, where we had a bunch of staff members and medical staff sitting in a line of chairs and then, basically, just like all of the campers at camp were sitting in front of them and they had the floor to ask questions about how living with diabetes was what they thought their personal experiences were like kind of like this, but in a much more broad and open setting.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: And I was not on this panel but I was tasked with helping, and this was as a counselor.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I was tasked with just being like eyes on the ground and like helping make sure that campers were paying attention and not doing stupid shit.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: And one of the people on the panel said that they had experienced diabetes burnout for multiple years as an adult.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: And I think that was a moment because this was before I had started working out, so before I had gotten into that like healthier relationship with diabetes.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I heard that and it was like in the back of my mind this little switch got flipped where I was like oh wait, hold on.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Like maybe I'm not specifically personally losing at diabetes because I didn't do so hot for a few years.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Like having that sense of like oh shit, happened to them too was a big moment.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: That helped me later on down the line when I was like my budget has been 400 for eight hours and I don't know why.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Being able to take that feeling and instead of being like I'm a failure at diabetes, I'm losing whatever, being able to recontextualize that thought as okay, well, you know, I'm having a bad day, but everyone has bad days.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Even with diabetes or with like, I can do this.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Losing right now or having that bad blood sugar does not mean that I am in fact losing every day after this as well.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: That's cool, man.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: I like where that answer went because it's being there last year as a spectator and being able to interact with the staff members, being able to interact with some of the kids as we were recording stuff and as me and Graham were doing like our presentation.
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: It was very interesting that day to watch everyone, to have my eyes wide open and see what's going on.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: And there was a point in that whole process last year where I was thinking to myself what did I just get myself into?
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: This is gonna be incredible.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: The amount of attention that is being able to be on me is being able to be on me, being able to be on diabetes is unreal because it's from all different aspects.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: It's from the young person that might be struggling.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: It's from the CIT person or someone that's moving into a different part of their life.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: It's from a staff member that might have been a camper before or not been a camper before.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: It's also coming from the staff member that's not even a diabetic, to the nutritionists, to the food people, to the hand wave staff, to the doctors like all of these aspects, of all these individual people trying to put all this knowledge and information into these young people.
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: Last year my brain was just like, oh my God, this is incredible.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: And I had multiple conversations last year with Anthony, the camp director, because of Graham, but I didn't really know until I got there.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: And then now seeing it on the other side this year, actually being a staff member and being involved and really being in depth in it, it was insane.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: It was insane.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: And I think that that type of information is so powerful.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: And I have an individual or a family that I know here in my hometown that their daughter was just diagnosed in January and I was fortunate enough to take them out to lunch and talk to them about diabetes and then when I told them that I was gonna be a counselor at Hamway, their lights just poked out because she's nine years old and they had already signed up for Hamway for the junior week To then really and this was before camp even started so like I know people are like really getting into this concept of going to this camp because it is such a powerful place, not just to learn but to feel like you're not alone, and I know that so many people feel that way when we're first diagnosed.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you hit the nail right on the head.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I think that is why camp exists, because it's a great way to put information in the hands of kids who really need it.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: But also it's a place where kids can be in an environment where they are so taken care of with this like overlying medical issue that they can think of other things.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Their lives, weirdly, at a diabetes camp are almost entirely disconnected from their diabetes, like being a camper and being a counselor, like I have so many conversations with people when I'm at camp that are about everything and anything and obviously diabetes is a part of that.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: But there's just this, this freedom to focus on other things.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: There are campers that use different names at camp than they do at home.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: There are campers who I'm trying not to like go too into depth because it's just not always my information to share.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: But there's a really great freedom for these campers to do things that or try things that they normally wouldn't try because of their diabetes, because it's so well taken care of by the staff, by the medical, by the counselors, that it's like I don't know they just they get to focus on other things.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Because when I think about being a camper at another camp, I always had this underlying thought in the back of my head like okay, well, you know, I have to go to the nurse early to be able to get my insulin for lunch, or I have to make sure that if there's a like a cupcake, because someone's birthday is today or whatever, like I have to worry about getting a pencil.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Or like getting up and then going getting my sugar free Jell-O, whatever.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: There's always like another thing at other camps, but at Hamway it's just like it's part of the day, it's part.
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: You know, diabetes is part of part of the day, part of your day.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: Like I can't, like you know I get it like it's.
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: It's incredible.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: It's incredible what Camp Hamway Life Care Alliance has been able to accomplish over the years with developing this camp.
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: Now that they have more technology now for the medical staff with camp views, and like it's incredible that you know that being able to have the power of being able to see someone's CGM 24-7 and not have to care around your phone, you know it's crazy so it's, I totally.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: There were multiple times when I was woken up at four in the morning because someone at camp had just so happened to see that my blood sugar was 65 with an arrow down and I was dead asleep, and so I woke up with some random person in my face saying hey, wake up, you need to eat your drink your juice.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: You need to drink your juice by yourself.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know I.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: There was part of me the first night.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: The first night I think I was going not low, because low for me wasn't it's not low for me think I was like 70 and you know seven, maybe I was like 68, but I knew, I knew I was coming back up cuz I didn't feel low and it was during rounds, right.
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: So to for everyone that's listening, to put and put this into contextual understanding, at Camp Hamway they do midnight rounds, right.
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: So the medical team will go around to every single cabin girls cabins, guys cabins and they will check everyone's blood sugar if you are under a hundred, and they will make sure that you, your blood sugar, gets treated if you are under a hundred or ninety or something like that.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: And I know that in that, for in that moment, I'm like fast asleep.
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: I'm like finally got to sleep at like 12, 31 o'clock and they're doing their final check-in, check-in rounds, and I got woken up by one of the medical are you?
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: Are you good?
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: I know you can take care of yourself, but I just want to make sure that you were good and I was at first.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: I'm frustrated with that cuz I'm trying to freakin sleep, get out of my face, but.
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: But I also appreciated that.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: They also appreciated that I was in a place where I could feel safe and not have to have the burden of I know that I hear this alarm.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna make the choice probably not deal with it right now because I don't really feel I feel fine and I know I'm gonna come back up.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: I'm not gonna deal with it, but I can.
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: That burden can be taken off me right now and put on someone else.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: And that's one of the most amazing things that, as a as a parent if I as a parent, because I have two little girls, if I'm sending my kids, if I'm sending my girls to a camp like this and they have diabetes and I can, you know, stay or be able to sleep at night on knowing that these people and these the staff is going to have, be able to keep my daughters alive and be able to keep them safe, that's such a powerful thing that you wouldn't be able to say any other camp, you would not be able to say that at any other overnight camp.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I would also say I don't know a lot about other diabetes camps, but I can say personally that the current directors of Camp Hamway the director Anthony and then the assistant director Carter have done personally a lot of work to be able to push Hamway into this modern age, to be able to get it into this position where really it is like you can open up on this third website like if you're if you're a medical and you need to be like doing these night rounds you can open up this third-party app and then just there they are every single campers, blood sugar.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Just right there, their desktops are feeding live into this, this computer screen.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Like that's an amazing thing for a diabetes camp and I know that there was a lot of work that had to go on behind the scenes to be able to implement something like that and so like that's.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: I mean again, I don't know other camps, I don't know their directors, I don't think that there are more devoted directors for camps.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: I just I really don't.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: It would be really hard for me, having seen these guys like do what they do, it's really hard for me to see that and then imagine there's like a way to raise that bar.
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: You know yeah, yeah, I mean both of them have have definitely raised the bar.
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: I mean I, I saw it.
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: I saw it last year, even just in a day, and I saw it actually being on staff this year.
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: So, for sure, the absolutely, absolutely to get again, because I want, I want to put something that you said I think needs to put, needs to be put into contextual understanding for people that have never been to camp and don't really know what we're talking about.
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: We're talking what we're talking about here but, as Zul is mentioning is, it's a third-party app called Campviews that Camp Hamway is using, where, if you are on a DEXCOM, just like you would do sharing if you're a caregiver and you, you know you share your information from your child's phone and you can see their blood sugar 24-7.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: This Campviews allows for the same exact thing.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: So when you walk down into the medical cabin, there's a big freaking screen TV and it has literally everybody in on camps, blood sugars up on the screen in order from lowest to highest, and if you're under, I think it's like what is it under 70 that you're in red, or if it's under a hundred you're in red, or something like.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: That is all.
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: But the first time I walked into the medical cabin and saw that even knew I knew it was happening.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: It was just like, oh man, this is some, this is some real stuff right here.
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: This is some really cool real stuff that is taking taking the safety of an individual up a notch.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: Yes, because I mean you can attest to it.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: It used to be, you know, even before CGM it was pick your finger, take your insulin, pick your finger again if you're low 15 minutes later, or shoot, you're still okay, pick your finger again.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: So it's like constant.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: It's that constant process.
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: And now it's like so seamless it's ridiculous, it's crazy yeah, it really is.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: I I've always done the night rounds as a counselor and my first, I think, two years as a counselor we were not supposed to use CGM data as a substitute for actually checking during night rounds, just for accuracy sake.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: And so I got really really good at doing like these ninja pokes.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: We're like I'm, I'm like I'm the finger to get the blood in the tip and then I poke them and they don't feel it like get the blood sugar right down, it's great.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: And then I roll up to camp the next year.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, you don't have to do that anymore.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: Like if they have a CGM you don't have to check them.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: And since then I have had exclusively cabins full of CGMs.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: So like every once in a while I get to be able to capitalize on that skill.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: But I also have to admit that if there was like one skill that I'm glad that I don't have to use, it would definitely be the night round finger stick like that.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: I'm okay with that going the way at the dodo yeah, the ninja skill.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: That's funny because it's.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: I also had this year a cabin of all CGMs.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: Everyone had a dexcom, except for one had a Libre, but still everyone had a CGM.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: So like rounds are easy.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Libre's piss me off, though, because I mean not for them, but like when you're 13 and you're asleep and I have to figure out like where on the seat on your body the little like circle is, and then I have to like move you a little bit, but I don't want to make it weird, so I have to move you by your shoulders, and that's not working really well because you can't get the leverage, and so then I just end up having to finger stick like I don't know.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: I just wish the Libre was dude.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: That's hilarious that is hilarious because you're way nicer than me.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: One of my campers had a Libre and he would every single night he'd always be sleeping on that freaking side.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: So I, I wouldn't care, I'm like I gotta get you, I gotta get blood sugar man, I'm gonna tell you.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: So I would literally grab him, like grab his arm, roll him to the edge of the bed, so now his arm is is, I can actually get, scan his arm and then I'll put him back down.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: And then I had kids that in my cabin that wouldn't wake up if they were low or if they like it would be so hard to get him to wake him up out of their sleep, whether they're lower or you know, in range or high.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: And so I'm like, using my strength, like you got you better, sit up.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: So I'm holding these guys up as they're drinking a freaking juice box.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: Like I'm trying to hold these guys up, I'm like saying like to them.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: Like very, not violently or in a bad manner is like wake up, what are you doing?
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: Get up.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: I had no, I didn't even care, I don't care.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: Like I'm here to make sure you're safe and you're not safe right now.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: Get your butt up you're.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: You're not wrong, I guess I just I'm way more like anxious as a person, not like I don't like have like anxiety about something going wrong.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: As I'm trying to wake up a camper, I just at like the energy that I exude.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: I think I am too nervous to be like get up you're sitting up like I'm.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna almost pour the juice down your throat just so that you can drink this campers who will argue that they have had.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: They have taken their treatment with the juice still in their hand.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: I have had campers try and eat a granola bar wrapper first, like I've seen it all and I can.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: I can deal with that, but for whatever reason, I just I can't do the like.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Get up where I'm shaking you and I'm trying to like yeah turn your brain into a smoothie or something like.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: That's just never been my style yeah, like I, yeah I, I just I in it and for me it was like almost fun.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: I almost got a kick out of it.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: All right, I gotta move this kid like he's not getting up.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: All right, I put my hand on his back.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: I gotta lift them up, I gotta hold them up.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: I gotta like say something to him while he's drinking his juice box.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: He's like dozing off and he's like doing the whole head head rock thing.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: No, stay up, stay up.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: No, no, get up.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: That's hilarious man, that's funny.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: All right, man.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: So, as we kind of move to the end of this, what would be one to three things that you a piece of advice that you can give someone, whether it's you know, advice from like your own personal experience of like your, your success over the years doesn't necessarily have to be from camp, it could be.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: But what's kind of one to three things that you piece of advice that you can really give someone?
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: oh, I got this hands down.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: It is the idea.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: For me.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: Something that I have struggled with is the idea that my success has to look like someone else's.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: As a counselor, for a long time I had this feeling of like oh you know, mike and I counselor very similarly, but he does it differently, so I'm not doing as good of a job because I see that he is doing it differently and getting really good results.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: So that that kind of narrative the life doesn't work like that.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: As a listener to this podcast, you might be sitting there thinking, oh wow, well, this guy says he works out and tries to eat really healthy and that's the way that he's been able to manage his diabetes.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: That does not, however, mean that you as a person will have to manage your diabetes or will manage your diabetes best in that way.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, maybe I will always advocate for just trying to make healthy decisions in life, but success is a very personal thing, in the same way that diabetes is a very personal disease.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: Like you are going to have a different pathway to success than I have then can has, than anyone that you know.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: So just don't see someone else doing something and then assume that they're doing it the right way or that your way is wrong.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: I've had to tell myself a lot hey, hold on, like they're doing a different ab workout than me, that doesn't mean that my ab workout is bad.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: Like like from small stuff like that to however big you want to get, like that is honestly the advice that I have given to campers in the last month, I've given to friends in the last year and is probably the biggest Impact on the way that I try and live in terms of like mental health and actual life and that mix.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: Man Well said, well said.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: Man Well said.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, as we we're finishing up here, azul, what If people want to reach out to you just ask you questions about your exercise routine, about your successes being a diabetic?
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: Where can they connect with you?
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: Um, I'm not.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not not a ton of places.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not like a very Online kind of guy.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty basic.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: I have Instagram.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Azul is one of two names that I use.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: The other one is actually Judah, but my Instagram is Judah isn't cooking.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Um, there are some periods in there in between each word.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: I'm crazy like that.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: It's the public account and I have some workout stuff up there already.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: But that would probably be the the way to do it if someone wanted to reach out and Hit me up for whatever reason.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: I don't really.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: I don't have Twitter or like discord.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: I hear they're good, but it's actually now Sorry, not Twitter.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: That's been canceled.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: That's crazy.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw that a week ago and I'm like what the heck is this?
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: Why, why, what, what's going on?
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: Twitter's X, and Mark Zuckerberg and the other one are fighting.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Who is it?
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: Musk and Elon Musk.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know Elon Musk.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: Well, facebook is trying to move to just being meta now.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're also trying to get us to live in VR headsets, I think that was a thing that I was told at one point.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually haven't heard a lot about that over the last year.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: I heard a lot about it last year though.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: That's.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think was it.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: Kiki Palmer was trying to convince me to like order some sort of food in the headset and then that was a Year ago and I don't think I've been advertised about it since.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: I'm okay with that.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: But Hmm, interesting, well, all right.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: Well, thanks everybody for joining us as well.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your evening and Sitting down and chatting.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: I'm glad I am finally able to release a conversation with you out to the world, because you have just so much knowledge and and it's just, it's been a absolute pleasure talking with you and getting to know you and Getting to know you over during camp and and I'm excited to continue that relationship over the years.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, 100%.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: I mean I am always super honored to be invited on a podcast or I mean really on like a Friend's lunch to Starbucks, whatever.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: So it is always a pleasure to be able to come on and talk a little bit with some really cool people or a really cool guy in this case.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean it was really really fun being able to live next to you for a week as a counselor, because you, I Mean from day one.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: I think we're doing things that some counselors might not be doing a Few years into their their time at a camp.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: So, like it was just it was awesome being able to get to know you and and live next door to you and try and Align times to work out together or something.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we still didn't get that to happen, but we will next year.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, with the way that off-time work suggests, it's really hard to make that happen.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: I had like five people trying to To join me whenever I was working out and it just never happened.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know that first that what I was thinking, that that Monday or Tuesday that meeting key worked out.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: It's like we had like three or four people the next day.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: Nice but we ended up playing for his Frisbee golf instead.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, games tend to mutate a little bit.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so alright, man.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: Thanks again for coming on.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: Thanks everybody for joining us and we will see you guys next time.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: Thank you again for listening.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: It's such a pleasure to Continue to host this show, especially when I get to do amazing things Like this going to camp and being a counselor and and being a mentors to so many young people with diabetes.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: It really is a huge, huge Benefit to what I do every single day and talking about this condition in such a positive way.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: If anything that you heard in this episode about camp Really resonated with you whether you're a caregiver of a young diabetic, or if you're maybe an adult and you have diabetes or heck, don't have diabetes and you want to give back or you want to get your child Involved at the camp, please reach out to life care Alliance and Camp Hamway.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: I'll leave contact information To the director, anthony Meyer, in the show notes.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: I really encourage you to reach out, ask questions, because it really is a special place for young diabetics to learn and Just really be themselves.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: So thank you so much for listening.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: It was a pleasure talking to Azul and I really hope that you got some value out of this episode.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much and I will see everyone next time.