Rob Solo Minisode - Upcoming Events, ATTD Updates, Rob Life Updates

[00:00:00] Rob Howe: Welcome back to another episode of the Rob and Eritrea Show on Diabetics Doing Things, telling the amazing stories of people with diabetes from all over the world. Spoiler alert, it's just Rob today. We got some scheduling snafus and we need to get an episode out this week. So that's how it's going. You know how I do it. When I'm going solo on the pod, I've got the Coke Zero can open and in my hand and we're ready to pod. Okay, so a lot of things coming up this month. The most important is that by the time this goes to publication on the same day, March 27th, we are announcing our first event of 2024. We are going back to Pax and Beneficia on April the 13th, which is Saturday, April the 13th. And we're going to be doing a diabetes meetup. We're going to have some cool mixer games, icebreakers for folks so you can get to meet someone. our goal always is for you to come to one of our events and leave with a friend with diabetes so come out april 13th paxton beneficia in grapevine it's again central location in the metroplex if you live east south north west you can come to that event and we've got the roastery rented out we're not gonna do the roastery tour but we really enjoyed the engagement side of our latte class last year our latte art making class so this year we're gonna have how you make the perfect pour over. And during COVID, Eritrea and I were really big on our artisan coffee because we didn't have anywhere to be. We were making pour overs all the time. And there really is a craft to it. And a lot of it is in how you grind the beans. But our experts from Pax and Beneficia are going to be taking us through the pour over class. And I think it's really cool because pour over is a very manual type of coffee making. And our friends from Medtronic Diabetes who are sponsoring the event, we're going to be talking about automation and talking about automated insulin delivery and the MiniMed 780G system. So if you want to learn a little bit more about the latest and greatest from Medtronic, they just announced their new sensor in Europe. It's still with the FDA in the US, but they got a new sensor coming out, which integrates with the 780G. So if you're in Dallas, even if you're not, come on out April 13th to the Pax and Beneficia meetup diabetics doing things. We're back with our events. This is going to be our signature springtime event for adults with diabetes. So grab a friend with diabetes and come out. It's going to be free of charge. Thanks to Medtronic sponsoring the event. And thanks again to Pax and Beneficia for bringing us back for year two. That's actually year three of our partnership with them in our second year doing an event at a Pax and Beneficia. We also have a Thrivable partnership. So you guys have probably heard the ads on our previous couple of episodes for Thrivable. And if you guys know anything about this podcast, we are passionate about giving people with diabetes opportunities to make money from their insights. And we're going to talk a lot today about the patient perspective and patient input to use the tagline from dedoc°, which I'm going to talk a little bit about more later, nothing about us without us. So again, the decisions about diabetes therapies are being made one way or another, make sure your voice is a part of them and you can earn money from doing that. And Thrivable is giving us the opportunity to do that. And we're partnering, trying to get more people registered. It's thrivable.app.rob. So again, thrivable.com, sorry, thrivable.app.rob. Check that out. We're gonna include the link in the show notes. If you haven't done that yet, but it's been on your list, don't forget, check it out and support our partners for partnering and sponsoring the show. there's also March Madness time. I don't know about you guys, but I'm a huge March Madness person. The boys group chat from my teammates in college was jumping this week. It's amazing to see how a little bit of basketball, even after watching like no college basketball, like career low in college basketball watching for me this year, I've jumped right back on. And you know, just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in. But what's really interesting this year, and this is something that I haven't seen a ton of in years past, but there's a lot of T1D representation, both on the women's and the men's side. And if you guys are keeping up with college basketball, you know that the women's game has eclipsed the men's game in terms of popularity, which is exciting for our ladies hoopers out there. So definitely just wanted to shout out the hoopers in the March Madness tournament living with diabetes. That's Ari Long, Ari Long from Washington. Shalomi Sanders from the University of Colorado. Let's go Buffs. Isaac Traudt from the Creighton Blue Jays. Shout out Creighton. I think they're going to go a long way. Spencer Legg from Charleston Cougars. Definitely shout out to Spencer and his family. They do a really awesome job raising awareness for T1D. Miro Little, who also is from Finland, but he plays at Baylor. So just down the street and Baylor, as you guys know, is where Lauren Cox, T1D basketball legend went to school. And then Zeke Mayo from South Dakota. So shout out to all of our T1D ballers. Good luck to each of you guys in the tournament. Obviously, Charleston is already out, but hey, it's a huge honor just making it to the tournament. So shout out to them. March is Women's Health Month and DCB and Tidepool are recruiting for their clinical trial. So check that out if you like. If you want to be part of a clinical trial, it's really important for patients to use their voices and their experience in clinical trials. If you have the opportunity, I've never done one, but I think after talking to so many people about how impactful they can be, I think I'm gonna do one here in the next couple of years. So I'll keep you guys posted on that. I definitely don't need another thing to do, but I think that they have a really big opportunity to impact not only the future of diabetes care, but to make life better for people with diabetes. And that's something that I always wanna make sure to keep at the forefront. And the DCB and Tidepool clinical trial is a great way to do that. So definitely check that out in the show notes. Okay, so at the beginning of this month, I guess we got to Florence at March 1st, and the first week was the Advanced Technologies and Therapies for Diabetes, ATTD. So it was my first time going to this conference. I have talked about some of the conferences that I've been to over the years. I've been to the ADA Scientific Sessions a couple of times, ADCES here on the state side, and I got to go to EASD a few years ago in Europe. This was one of the sort of conferences that I wanted to make sure to check the box to go to. And I had never been before and I hadn't had the opportunity to go with a brand partner, which is usually how I get to go to these conferences. Most recently, I've gone to conferences with Medtronic. I will definitely continue to do that. And Mankind as well for the last couple of years. But this time was our first conference going just as diabetics doing things. and we were able to get a press badge as a member of the media, which is a really important moment for us in the growth of the podcast as its own entity. And Diabetics Doing Things is its own entity. It's not just my side project. It is its own functioning company. And just because everybody's contractors doesn't mean it's not really, really impactful. But we wanted for the first time to go unattached to an event so we could cover all of the different announcements. And I'll be honest with you, in terms of like huge breakthrough innovations and maybe like 2023 was just a really big year, there weren't too many insane announcements at ATTD. It was pretty much showcasing the research from the past year and a lot of like real world data from like the MiniMed 780G, for example, and some of the other hybrid closed loop systems and automated insulin delivery systems. Now that they've had a chance to be with patients for a longer period of time. So I wrote up on the blog, and I'll include the link in the show notes, my breakdown from the conference, which I called the three A's of ATTD, and those are access, adherence, and automation. So if I'm going to break down the three A's really quickly for you, access is number one. Across the board, no matter where you're from, whatever country you live in, whatever healthcare system and how that works, if you have access to the best technology and the best formularies, drugs, pharmacology, you have better outcomes than those who don't. And there was a really great disparities panel that I highlighted. Shout out Dr. Addala, who was a guest on the podcast last fall. And you can check out her interview. I'll include that in the show notes as well. But if you can't get your hands on it, you can't benefit from it. And there was a lot of data, updated data on the disparities in some of the populations and some of the differences between patient sets in just trusting technology and trusting healthcare practitioners. It was really, really interesting. and it kind of flows into my second A, which is adherence. Not only do you need access to it, but you need to make sure that it's sustainable access so that you can stick with it. There was a particular data set that showed how quickly some of these at-risk patient populations are transitioning off of CGM and automated insulin delivery because they don't have sustainable systems to keep them on. So they're either income or insurance or if there's not commercial insurance in their country, whatever the healthcare programs from the government weren't able to support them. So adherence is a big piece of it. If you can't have access to it and you can't keep it on, how are you supposed to get the results that we want? So again, just like at the very core of everything, it's super cool to see all this great technology. But what was always top of mind for me is how can we make sure that patients are able to get this? And I think right now it's very top of mind in the community. there's a Humalog vial shortage. I can tell you it's not because they're just giving out more Humalog prescriptions. That's certainly not what it is. I don't know if it's supply chain or what have you, but there are real access challenges even in the most developed countries in the world. So again, access is the most important thing. We're gonna continue to talk all about that. The last A, the third A is automation. And I got to see a lot of sessions, both from brands and just from some of the research. it's really cool to see the improved outcomes when you're wearing an automated insulin delivery system or an advanced hybrid closed loop system. You guys know I wear the MiniMed 780G system and I've been on it for just under a year and I really love it and my numbers have been great. And the biggest part for me is that I don't think about my diabetes as much as I used to and I still get the same results. So whether it's the MiniMed 780G system, whether it's Tandem Control IQ, whether it's Omnipod 5, whether it's beta bionics, islet, or there's IAPS or any other DIY loop system, advanced hybrid closed loop automation works for diabetes management across the board. You see great numbers of like reduced hyperglycemia, more time in tight range, which is a new thing that I had never heard until the conference. And I honestly think we are not at the place where we can start to say time in tight range is the standard because we just got to time in range and so many people globally are not even reaching close to their typical time and range numbers or the best practices for time and range numbers. So I don't want to like make it more exclusionary. So I heard time and tight range. I don't know if we're there ready for that, but the good news is on these automated systems, time and tight range is higher than not. And then there's also a severe reduction in hypoglycemia, which is often the most scary part about living with diabetes is that you miscalculate some carbs, you maybe get some exercise and you don't have something to treat it with and you can be in serious trouble really quickly. So, you know, it's amazing to see how much hypoglycemia has been reduced with these automated insulin delivery systems. So access, adherence, and automation. Those are my three A's from ATTD. Special shout out to all the folks that I saw at the conference. Justin Diabetech, really cool. We're going to be doing a little podcast collaboration with him very soon. Dr. Addala, like I mentioned, guest and friend of the pod. Emma Klatman, who's also a friend of the pod and a guest last fall. Renza from dedoc°. Tom from type 1 Talks. George, who is working for Omnipod currently, but has been a longtime friend of the pod. Greta from DCB. Marin and Svia from DCB and all the DCB folks. And then also all of my friends from Medtronic. So shout out to you guys. It was great to see you across the pond. Florence is an amazing city. I don't think it's really a conference town. I think they got a lot of people there because it's such an amazing place. But in terms of a meeting city, it certainly was a very unique set of conference schedules and venues. It was very interesting. But shout out to Italy. You guys do it different there. Every meal that I had was the best meal I had while I was there, which was pretty incredible. And we walked a lot. So in terms of the amount of carbs that I ate, the amount of fats that I ate, and the amount of miles that I walked, Eritrea and I walked 60 miles over six days, basically. Our big walk day was 13.2 miles. So we walked more than a half marathon in Rome. And that was an amazing day. We did the Colosseum. We did the Trevi Fountain. We did St. Peter's Square. We did the Spanish Steps. And we had a really big blast going all around seeing these ancient places. The U.S. is not that old. and a lot of these buildings and temples and amazing places were built 2,000 years ago, 1,800 years ago, or before the Magna Carta was signed. In the case of Florence, we saw Michelangelo's David. Right next to it, it literally says, sculptural experts say, if you're studying sculpture, look no further than this. You don't have to go look at anything else if you've seen Michelangelo's David. So I've seen it now and man, it's amazing. And it was just so cool to see all that history and to walk those streets. We saw Galileo's sundial, lots of cool science, lots of good work. So if people are lining up for your stuff more than 500 years after you created it, that's a good measure that it's pretty good. So shout out to those guys who were doing that work back then that we're still celebrating today. Michelangelo, Shakespeare, just to name a few. Eritrea's got a question in here for me. How does one make it to one of these conferences? How do you do that? There are financial barriers, obviously. It was not cheap just to fly overseas for a week. However, there are options for you. And the best one, I think, and one that I think more U.S. diabetes advocates should apply to and take advantage of is the dedoc° Voices program. But what is dedoc°? I don't understand dedoc° when I'm here over in the US. Is that for me, it started off just in Germany. So that's the Deutschland, the DEE of the DOC. But DOC is Diabetes Online Community. So Germany and Deutschland, Diabetes Online Community. But it's inclusive. It's global. There were people from all over the world there. People from Zimbabwe, people from Saudi Arabia, people from India. And they were all part of the dedoc° Voices program. But there were also US advocates. shout out Chelsea Rice, who's been on the podcast. And we're going to have back to talk about his experience as a dedoc° voice. But for ATTD, for EASD, IPSAD, or ISBAD, I don't know, I probably butchered that. I need Eritrea here to correct me on this stuff. These big international diabetes conferences and meetings, they have this dedoc° voices program that you can apply to and get a scholarship that covers your travel and room and board while you're going and attending the conference. And again, back to the dedoc° slogan of nothing about us without us. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the dedoc° symposium here, which was the first symposium that I went to at the conference. It is critical that we have more patient voices, not only in the programming and on the panels at these conferences, but also just in the rooms, walk in the halls, because there are a lot of industry decisions and a lot of scientific decisions being made without the patient voice involved. And I think that's something that has changed for the better in the past few years, but we still have a long way to go. Speaking of the dedoc° symposium, there was a long Q&A session after the advocates presented. And one of the big topics was on paying patient advocates and valuing and putting a monetary value on the insights that they are sharing, their lived experience. So back to the thrivable piece, like you can get paid for your lived experience, get paid for your insights. We want to make sure that that is circulated across the board because patient advocates are giving of themselves, giving their time to help make life with diabetes better for the community and better for people like them. And it was a really interesting case study for the Diabetes Creator Collective, which we submitted last year to the DCB Innovation Challenge, because each one of the advocates who was on the dedoc° panel talked about how challenging it is to get paid to do what they do, especially if they're not like a content creator or, you know, don't have a podcast platform or don't have like a, you know, they just may not be that. They want to get paid for their insights, for their time, for their whatever art it is that they make or whatever contributions they have to the community. And it was a really interesting response to that, especially from some of the professionals in the room, because they had never thought before of compensating patients for their time, which I know to you and I sounds a little bit crazy, sounds a little bit like they just hadn't really been thinking about it. But it just goes to show how far we have to go in educating the greater diabetes community and industry that patient voices really do matter. And the insights go into product, they go into development, they go into, you know, get circulated among these companies, and then patients should get paid for them. You don't have to have an insight that results in a huge innovation for that to be valuable. So I just really want to maintain that patient voices are important. We need to pay our advocates a fair and living wage for their insights and for their work. And we need more patient voices at these conferences. So if that sounds like something you want to get into, something you're interested in, apply to the dedoc° Voices Scholarship. Check it out, dedoc.org, D-E-D-O-C.org for more information. Eritrea had some questions for me just about my diabetes treatment at this time. She asked if I ever got my insulin, which my doctor has been trying to get me on FIASP, getting my insurance to cover it has been the typical hurdles that I've had to go through. I've now written two prior authorizations. My doctor issued an appeal because that's the only way I can get sort of an emergency prescription if I need to. I put that in air quotes for those of you who can't see me at home. So I never got it. I've put all the paperwork in. I've had hard conversations last weekend with my insurance company, I was pretty angry and snippy. So I'm sorry for what I said after the insurance that I pay so much for won't cover the medicine that I desperately need to survive. But I did say those things. I now have downloaded a pharmacy savings card because I have commercial insurance and because Novo Nordisk has a coupon that I can get maybe for $35, but $99 maximum. My guess is that I'm going to have to pay the maximum that they're not going to let me out of there without paying the hundred bucks, but at least I can get my prescription filled for a hundred dollars. And I'm fortunate that I'm able to do that. And so that's my update for my insulin. And yeah, just very frustrating to have to do that. Updates on my 2024 goals. So this was good. I made this post on Instagram because I wanted to make sure that I could follow and hold myself accountable to my ins and outs. So 2024 Hoop Fest Open Champion was number one on my list. I'm in the final four in one of my leagues, basketball leagues right now. So I'm playing pretty well. My body is holding up okay. I cold plunged today and I played basketball for two hours this morning and played pretty well. So feeling good about the development. I just got to keep staying in shape and make sure that I don't get hurt. I'm currently reading When McKinsey Comes to Town, which is by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe. The subhead is the hidden influence of the world's most powerful consulting firm. And I got this when I was traveling and it's just really good. It's basically all these, all the big problems in the world were probably negotiated or identified by McKinsey on both sides of the equation. So whether it's healthcare, whether it's China, whether it's Saudi Arabia, all these other things, you know, executive compensations, safety at theme parks. There's just a lot of really interesting investigative journalism on McKinsey's role in that, which is really interesting. So let's see, what else do I got? outs, my negative thinking, scarcity mindset, not tracking heart rate and workouts. So yeah, I'm doing all that. I feel like we're making progress. I feel like we're on track in terms of our goals. And I'm currently finishing up. I have three more classes in my Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, which has taken a lot of time this year, but I've learned a great deal and I've really grown a lot. So that's a big insight for me from last year. If I'm in a structured program. I typically do well. I feel like I'm improving. I feel like I'm learning. And that's an important part for me on the mental health side. A couple of things that we didn't get a chance to talk about today. Number one is right now it is Ramadan. So, you know, shout out to all of our listeners who are currently observing Ramadan, which includes a fast. And so I want to talk a little bit about that with Eritrea next time that we get a chance to connect on it. Maybe we'll do it in a mailbag session, just kind of give her a Ramadan update. Kyrie Irving for the Dallas Mavs is also fasting for Ramadan. So he's playing basketball in these games without any water and without any food. And he's been playing like a madman. He's been absolutely out of his mind good. So it's interesting to see kind of how that focus and, you know, doing without. You know, Seneca talks about, you know, for a period of time, you should always live on the bare minimum. And I feel like, you know, fasting from sunup to sundown is a great way to do that and really reinforce what's important. At the same time, with diabetes, it can be very, very difficult. And Eritrea has a story that she'll share. Maybe we'll do a mailbag after our next interview talking about how her diabetes was invalidated during Ramadan. So I want to make sure that we give her time to do that. But fasting with diabetes is very difficult. Those automated insulin delivery systems and those hybrid closed-loop pumps really do make it a lot easier. I remember a time where I could not make it through the day of unless I ate at the same time every time. But these days it has a little bit more flexibility, but it's still extremely difficult to do a water and food fast for the entire day. So Ramadan cream to everybody out there listening and hopefully hearing me say that wasn't the most embarrassing thing that I've done on this pod today. Okay. So that is currently where we're at with diabetics doing things. more events coming. So keep an eye out. We're doing Diabetics Doing Things, Diabetes Legends Basketball Clinic in Dallas on June the 15th. And then we're going to be going back to Denver, September 14th. So keep those on your calendar. I'm going to be sending out the email and announcing on social media very soon, but the events are back and the year is flying by almost to the end of March, the time of publication. And where did the time go? So it's just the days are long and the years are short. And I'm definitely feeling that. So hopefully you guys enjoyed this little solo episode. Sometimes I just got to get on the mic and cook because we need that content. But again, thank you guys for listening. And remember that our new podcast is coming out every single week that we have the mailbag. The mailbag is pretty low volume. I need to know your drama. I want to know what's going on in your life with diabetes that you want other people to know about because that's what we're doing. We're our reels are popping off. We're doing our goal for the year is to do 10,000 views a week. And we've been on track. So we've had some amazing guests recently who've been on the podcast. I don't know if you guys have dug into the O's, but we've got a lot of good content coming and I'm very excited for as we get into Q2, our first event of the year. Looking forward to seeing some of you guys in person. So I'll see you next time. Later, guys.