Tag: Podcast

Sometimes the price people pay for being the first, being a pioneer, appears in their children. And so it was for Judy. It began in her eldest, first with minor rebellion then with running away and finally with an arrest. Judy didn’t know what to do. In the end, she had to send her daughter…

This chapter is a story about diabetes, about how a remarkable discovery was made because of Judy, because of Jeej’s work with her. They discovered that chromium plays a vital role in diabetes. It was decades before the wider scientific and research audience started to understand the full ramifications of this discovery, but at the…

Judy becomes famous. A reporter for Weekend Magazine in The Globe & Mail drives up to spend a day following her, talking to her, learning her remarkable story. Meanwhile, she complains about fuzzy feet to Jeej. He scratches his head over this unexpected development and after a few tests, discovers that she has diabetes. But…

Judy feels good. She dives into community and family life after learning a skill she never needed in Toronto: driving. She becomes active in the local church, joining the choir, volunteering in the office, being the first to offer to cook the main meal for an event. And she joins the pastoral team to visit…

Time to celebrate! Judy had told Jeej that she wanted to thank him by throwing a barbecue, and she’s true to her word. She invites all of us too, Jeej’s family. I’m almost ten years old at the time, and I’m excited about meeting this amazing woman. I not only meet her, but also the…

They said fat was bad. They said fat will lead to a fatty liver. They said fat, intravenous fat, was toxic. But when Judy came to Jeej with flaky skin after he took her off intravenous fat, he finally had the proof he needed. Fat was good. The experts were wrong. At last, a Canadian…

The hospital pharmacy provides Judy with only 2 weeks worth of food at a time. So twice a month, Judy bakes cookies, Cliff hitches up his homemade trailer, and they drive down to the city, down the Parkway, down to Toronto General Hospital to pick up her solutions and vitamins, her cold stuff and room…

Judy mayn’t be able to eat, but she lives to cook. Having at last returned home from spending 10 months in the hospital, she eagerly resumes her purpose: to nurture and care for her family, especially at dinnertime. And Sunday dinners are the most special of them all. Chapter Fourteen: A Different Kind of Dinnertime

Jeej, still riding high on the good news that Judy will be able to live at home, ponders how to disconnect her from her artificial feeding so that she can go out and about. He and his residents solve that problem, only to see Judy have an unexpected setback in her test results. It puzzles…