Lifeliner Podcast Archives - Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy

Lifeliner: Podcast 29, 30, And Epilogue

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:00:42 +0000

Jeej leaves the country on business, and Judy fades. She’s had a longer life than she’d ever thought possible back in 1970, and she decides it’s time to say good-bye. Yet death is not the end. And her life is not the beginning and end of TPN. Her example, her courage, her life inspired others to live longer, fruitful lives and restored quality of life to tens of thousands of very sick-but-not-dying people around the world.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Battle Is Done and Chapter Thirty: Resurrection

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Lifeliner: Podcast 28, Despair

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 07 May 2011 15:00:57 +0000

Cliff finds Judy dying in Toronto General Hospital. Panicked, he phones Jeej at his home. Jeej is astounded, but advises Cliff to transfer her to St. Michael’s Hospital if he wants him to look after her. Within hours, Judy is at the Queen Street hospital, and Jeej is there with his residents and the nurses. Shock at her condition stuns him for a moment, but he recovers quickly and mobilizes his team to save Judy’s life. Once again.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Despair

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Lifeliner: Podcast 27, Dr. Cowboy, Where Are You?

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 06 May 2011 15:44:16 +0000

Some change is not good. Judy’s doctor, the man who saved her life and kept her alive for almost two decades, has moved to a new hospital. Worse, the TPN program did not move with him because Toronto General Hospital fought for and won the battle to keep it. While Jeej works to train people at St. Michael’s Hospital and to create a new TPN program there, Judy’s health deteriorates.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Dr. Cowboy, Where Are You?

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Lifeliner: Podcast 26, LifelineLetter Award

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:02:53 +0000

“It was like travelling with a celebrity,” Marlene told me when I was interviewing her about Judy Taylor. Nowhere was that more true than on their road trips down to New York state for the annual Oley conferences. Judy loved those conferences, meeting fellow patients, being able to travel with her friends from Toronto General Hospital, talking to doctors and nurses involved in TPN care. For being the first to live on Home TPN and for inspiring so many to live good lives on this artificial form of feeding, Judy won the inaugural LifelineLetter Award from Oley.

Chapter Twenty-Six: LifelineLetter Award

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Lifeliner: Chapter 25 Podcast

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 00:04:29 +0000

In this chapter, Judy starts experiencing the consequences of too little nutrient knowledge early in her life on TPN. Back in the late 1960s/early 1970s, not much was known about Vitamin D given intravenously; because of Judy, they discovered the requirements are much less in TPN than in a normal food diet. At first, it seemed she’d be OK. But then in the 1980s, she began breaking bones. And soon her hair began falling out, for reasons unknown. Her health care team spent the decade trying to learn more, trying to help her.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Breaking Bones, Falling Hair

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Lifeliner: Chapter 24 Podcast, Sweden

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 20:16:04 +0000

Judy cannot believe it. For the first time in her life, she’s travelling in a plane over the clouds and over the seas. To Sweden. To be a star guest of Prof Arvid Wretlind at an international medical conference. She’s so thrilled, she’s not going to let a little thing like a skin abscess stop her.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Sweden

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Lifeliner: Chapter 23 Podcast

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:00:30 +0000

Judy fears bugs, the viral or bacterial kind, even a cold. For bugs can kill her. She takes pains to avoid them. Somehow though, she catches one. She quickly spirals down, and Cliff races her down the highways to Toronto General Hospital and Jeej. It’s touch and go. The entire hospital hears about it and worries. Will Judy make it?

Chapter Twenty-Three: Death Creeps Close

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Lifeliner: Chapter 22 Podcast, More Family Trouble

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:22:13 +0000

The fall out from Judy being absent for so long and then her life being one where death was ever present, continues. First Miriam leaves home, then Julie springs a surprise on her parents. Judy goes through a raft of emotions, but she never loses contact with her girls.

Chapter Twenty-Two: More Family Trouble

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Lifeliner: Chapter 21 Podcast

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 01:45:34 +0000

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 to Toronto.

Chapter Twenty-One: At the Police Station

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Lifeliner: Chapter 20 Podcast, Chromium Deficiency and the Swedish Professor

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:40:23 +0000

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 time it made the news. And Jeej enjoyed hugely both curing Judy’s diabetes, including her fuzzy feet, and making this ground-breaking connection between chromium and diabetes. She could eat cake again — if she still ate! In this chapter, he tells the tale to a receptive audience: the Swedish professor who conducted the first pioneering work in artificial feeding and who developed intravenous fat, the very fat Judy uses.

Chapter Twenty: Chromium Deficiency and the Swedish Professor

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Lifeliner: Chapter 19 Podcast, JJ, the Guinea Pig

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:14:15 +0000

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 that’s impossible! For 2 years he puzzles over this conundrum, and Judy grows tired of being a guinea pig. Time to give him a real one!

Chapter Nineteen: JJ, the Guinea Pig

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Lifeliner: Chapter 18 Podcast, The Bliss of Life

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 20:09:33 +0000

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 people in the local hospital. But she doesn’t stop visiting and thinking about her fellow lifeliners at Toronto General Hospital. Only the last chore of the day continues to cause her pain.

Chapter Eighteen: The Bliss of Life

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Lifeliner: Chapter 17 Podcast, Barbecue Season

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:47:22 +0000

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 nurses, other lifeliners, and Judy’s youngest daughter Miriam, who is my age. I get to try cookies, Judy’s own, and waterskiing for the first time too. It’s a long, bountiful day.

Chapter Seventeen: Barbecue Season

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Lifeliner: Chapter 16 Podcast, Essential Fat

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 18:33:40 +0000

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 resolved the fat controversy between Europeans and Americans. Meanwhile, six months after being discharged from hospital, Judy relishes in seeing her children and being able to look out on her lake and the snow. “You’re a lucky girl,” she says to herself.

Chapter Sixteen: Essential Fat

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Lifeliner: Chapter 15 Podcast, Supply Run

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:55:47 +0000

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 temperature stuff. She takes this opportunity to hand out her cookies and to visit patients struggling with adapting to this new kind of lifeline while he does all the heavy lifting.

Chapter Fifteen: Supply Run

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Lifeliner: Chapter 14 Podcast, A Different Kind of Dinnertime

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 01:50:36 +0000

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

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Lifeliner: Chapter 13 Podcast, Going Home with Lester

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 18:31:54 +0000

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 him, and it threatens Judy’s pending discharge. But Judy has faith that he will solve that problem too and that she will go home to her family.

Chapter Thirteen: Going Home with Lester

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Lifeliner: Chapter 12 Podcast, Easter Tidings

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:16:37 +0000

It’s a drizzly Easter Monday as Jeej walks to the hospital. But the weather is no match for his mood. He has good news for Judy, but she doesn’t know it yet. When she hears, and later shares with Cliff, they can hardly believe it. The miracle that they had all been working towards — she, Jeej, the nurses, residents, and pharmacists — has arrived. Now they can plan for the future.

Chapter Twelve: Easter Tidings

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Lifeliner: Chapter 11 Podcast, Tests and More Tests

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 19:42:22 +0000

Christmas is over. The staff are back. It’s time for more and different kinds of tests to see how Judy is doing, how this new artificial feeding is working. But Judy isn’t thrilled about the biopsies of liver and bone. To make matters worse, she doesn’t understand Jeej. He talks so fast. With the encouragement of one of her therapists, she has it out with him.

Chapter Eleven: Tests and More Tests

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Lifeliner: Chapter 10 Podcast, Christmas

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:21:31 +0000

Christmas Day dawns. Both Jeej and Judy’s children cannot contain their excitement. But there’s a person missing in Judy’s place: Judy. She cannot come home for Christmas as she is still too sick. And so while Jeej’s family enjoys the day together at home, Judy’s goes to the hospital.

Chapter Ten: Christmas

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Lifeliner: Chapter 9 Podcast, The Langer Line

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 22:45:23 +0000

The Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) seems to be working, but the ultimate goal of sending Judy home on this artificial form of feeding cannot be realised until they figure out a permanent way of feeding the TPN solutions into her vein. Tubes falling out her vein regularly just will not work. Dr. Bernie Langer, Jeej’s surgical colleague, observes neurosurgeons working with long Silastic catheters and has an idea.

Chapter Nine: The Langer Line

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Lifeliner: Chapter 8 Podcast, Judy’s Inspiration

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 19:19:53 +0000

As Judy heals, she becomes more conscious of her situation, of the extent of her illness, of the odds against her, and Jeej feels that she may fall into despair as a result. He talks to Cliff. Contrary to the ethos of the day, Jeej tells Cliff to bring the children in to see Judy. She must see them, for they are her inspiration, her reason to fight.

Chapter 8: Judy’s Inspiration

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Lifeliner: Chapter 7 Podcast, “I Could Be Pushing Up Daisies”

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 18:21:53 +0000

Judy liked to joke about being a pincushion for Jeej, about it being easier to put a zipper into her abdomen, about her dates with the knife. And one of her favourite expressions was “I could be pushing up daisies.” She could’ve. For on her third date in the operating room, she died.

Chapter Seven: “I Could Be Pushing Up Daisies”

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Lifeliner: Chapter 6 Podcast, Let Judy Die

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 19:39:18 +0000

Let Judy die, let her die with dignity, Judy’s mother pleads with Jeej. Let Judy die, this is madness, assert Jeej’s senior colleagues, insisting he not waste hospital resources. Under mounting pressure, Jeej agrees to withdraw antibiotic therapy from Judy for four days, but he refuses to stop feeding her artificially. If the bacteria doing the happy dance in her abdomen don’t kill her, then he will restart the antibiotics — in massive doses.

Chapter Six: Let Judy Die

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Lifeliner: Chapter 5 Podcast, Garbage-Bag Dressings

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 17:49:03 +0000

Judy’s skin has been starving, like the rest of her body, and cannot hold the stitches anymore. Her surgical wound has opened up, creating a maw through which they can see her insides — and smell them too. The nurses have to come up with a unique way to dress this hole, keep the sheets off it, and allow it to heal while Judy’s doctor Jeej works on her artificial feeding so that her broken skin can once again come together.

Chapter Five: Garbage-Bag Dressings

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Lifeliner: Chapter 4 Podcast, Dr. Cowboy

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:49:21 +0000

Judy protests as she’s slid into the ambulance, standing in the dark, waiting to move her from the suburban hospital to the big downtown teaching hospital Toronto General Hospital. This is all too much drama for her, but Dr. Jeejeebhoy awaits her, with his promise of life. She wants to live so much. Yet she’s a mess of morphine-induced hallucinations, raging infections, and starved muscles and skin. How will she survive all that? Her husband Cliff watches the big hospital’s machinery go into action and worries.

Chapter Four: Dr. Cowboy

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Lifeliner: Chapter 3 Podcast, Surgeries and Starvation

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:34:26 +0000

Judy is at Scarborough General Hospital, undergoing emergency surgery while Cliff waits anxiously at home with his neighbour. The surgeon calls him in the wee hours with good news. Cliff is ecstatic. But not for long. Soon the pain rises again, stronger even than post-operative pain. Another surgeon opens her up again and shock stills his hand. He knows he’s staring at death.

Chapter Three: Surgeries and Starvation

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Lifeliner: Chapter 2 Podcast, Shunts!

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:56:30 +0000

Dr. Khursheed N. Jeejeebhoy has come to Toronto, Canada to practice his brand of medicine, as taught to him by his Zoroastrian grandmother. But as the newbie and one of only two minority doctors on staff at Toronto General Hospital, he gets the tough cases, the one no one else wants, and now one of his patients is dying.

Chapter Two: Shunts!

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Lifeliner: Chapter 1 Podcast, Back in One Hour

Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:01:32 +0000

Judy Taylor had a simple dream for her life: grow up and have kids. But fate has other plans, and they come upon her rather painfully a few years after attaining her dream, her dream of a suburban life with husband Cliff, who works in sales, and their three daughters, ages 13 to 8.

Chapter One: Back in One Hour

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