Dying to Tell You – Details, episodes & analysis

Healthcare educator, social media influencer, and good friend of the podcast Hospice Nurse Julie shares the formative story of a patient who changed her perspective forever.

Working in the ICU as a young nurse, Julie started to see a pattern that disturbed her, an unwillingness at times to help patients and their families face what seemed inevitable to everyone on the healthcare staff but was never said out loud—that sometimes prolonging life isn't the best answer.

One patient in particular brought Julie to a tipping point, when she finally spoke up.

Join Cody for this beautiful conversation with @hospicenursejulie on how healthcare professionals can most compassionately help patients and their loved ones at the end of life, even when it's incredibly difficult.

Be sure to check out Julie's New York Times bestselling book "Nothing To Fear: Demystifying Death To Live More Fully" available wherever you buy books. And you can now pre-order her upcoming workbook "The Nothing to Fear Journal: Questions and Reflections for Demystifying and Preparing for the End of Life," an incredible resource for anyone...literally anyone, because we're all going to end up there eventually.

More information at: www.hospicenursejulie.com

---

Dying To Tell You: The Caring Perspective is a series of interviews with healthcare professionals who sit down with Cody to share stories of patients and experiences that have changed how they practice, how they view death, and how they live their lives.

It can be a difficult idea to engage with, but children face terminal illnesses and life-limiting circumstances too. And it takes vastly empathetic healthcare professionals like Dr. Jared Rubenstein to help them navigate their experience with grace, intention, and peace.

Dr. Rubenstein shares his perspective with Cody for this week's episode and talks about how his team came to institute Dignity Therapy Intervention for pediatric care and how some of his patients have reacted to discovering their own life stories.

---

Dying To Tell You: The Caring Perspective is a series of interviews with healthcare professionals who sit down with Cody to share stories of patients and experiences that have changed how they practice, how they view death, and how they live their lives.

A brief (3 minutes!) update after our Season Two finale!

It's Giving Tuesday and if you love the show, we have a humble request. If you believe in our mission to normalize death and dying and have the means, we'd like to ask for your support this Giving Tuesday. We are not a nonprofit, but even a small gift helps with production costs that include software licenses, stock music licensing, distribution platforms, and so much more.

Cody also shares news about our upcoming inter-season YouTube series "Dying To Tell You: A Caring Perspective," in which healthcare providers discuss their own encounters with death and dying, and how that has shaped both their practices and their lives.

For the finale of Season Two, we invited back a few previous guests for a very special Thanksgiving episode...with video! 

Riyaz, Rachel, and Javeeda joined us live and on-camera to share how they're doing and what they're grateful for. Join us around the virtual Thanksgiving table for this lovely hour of reconnection, gratitude, and life.

If you're listening to the audio podcast only, head over to YouTube to see the video version or watch it on our site: dttypodcast.com

Thank you also for joining us as listeners for Season Two. We've interviewed more people living with an ever-greater spectrum of circumstances in more far-flung locations, and we continue to see the common threads connecting us all.

We are deeply grateful that, with your support, we're able to keep sharing these stories with the world.

Between each episode, Cody offers a brief reflection on the themes he discussed with his guest the week before.

Today, Cody reflects on his conversation with Jackie & Shannon, and what can happen to our identity—our sense of self—when we begin to lose memories, shift roles, and face what sometimes seems like a stranger in the mirror. What makes a person who they are? What do we do when our role in life changes?

Music for this episode is from Trevor Ransom, "The Lamp Kept Us Warm But Now We Walk."

Our final guests of Season 2 are Jackie & Shannon, a mother and daughter navigating the changes and challenges of Alzheimer's. Jackie has moved out of her home in California and now splits her time between the homes of her daughters in Colorado. 

There is so much more to the story of Alzheimer's and dementia than just memory loss. The transformations of this disease impact almost every aspect of daily life. Jackie and Shannon share their challenges, their joys, their hopes and their fears in this wonderfully open and honest conversation with Cody. 

>>Theme Music by Michael Shynes, "The Other Side"<<

Music featured in this week's episode:

Michael Shynes, “California in the Spring”

Low Light, “Lay Me Down”

Russo and Weinberg, “Were All Having Fun”

Giants and Pilgrims, “Empty”

"I'm no different than you."

Between each episode, Cody offers a brief reflection on the themes he discussed with his guest the week before.

Today, Cody reflects on his conversation with Javeeda and how a diagnosis can make you feel different. But people with diagnoses are still people, just like everyone else. We're all simply doing the best we can with what we have in front of us.

Cody offers advice for how we can all treat "patients" as people, and how we're all in the same boat.

Music for this episode is from Trevor Ransom, "The Lamp Kept Us Warm But Now We Walk."

Javeeda lives in Toronto and has Adrenocortical carcinoma—a rare and aggressive cancer that starts in the kidney area. Her diagnosis has gone from 3-5 years to 1 year to "months not years."

Today she is facing the reality of raising her daughter, planning ahead as much as she can while not knowing how long she has left. At the same time, she's balancing her cancer treatment—which can possibly extend her life—with the impacts it can have on her quality of life. 

Javeeda’s story is also one of the shared human experience. As she says, “I’m no different than you.” We all have our challenges in life, and a cancer diagnosis does not suddenly turn you into something Other. “I just maybe know what I’m going to die from. Maybe.”

>>Theme Music by Michael Shynes, "The Other Side"<<

Music featured in this week's episode:

Kyle Cox, "This World"

Claire Kelly, "Detour"

The Days, "Tell Me" 

Between each episode, Cody offers a brief reflection on the themes he discussed with his guest the week before.

In this reflection, Cody reflects on last week's conversation with Deanna, how we all turn to faith in our own ways in times of challenge and fear. And how we can all try to find the peace inside to know we're ok.

We also share a remembrance from Beth Stevens of her grandfather, which will change how you see penny farthing bicycles from here on out. 

Music for this episode is from Trevor Ransom, "The Lamp Kept Us Warm But Now We Walk" and "Finding Rest" by Greg McKay. 

On the side of an ice-covered Wyoming highway, staring down an out-of-control semi, Deanna prayed and got a truly unexpected answer—she made it off that road alive but less than a year later was diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. What she sees now is that she was given time to say goodbye.

>>Theme Music by Michael Shynes, "The Other Side"<<

Music featured in this week's episode:

Tom West, “Antarctica”

Straight White Teeth, “Tell It In a Letter”

Maya Isacowitz, “All of the Miles”

Duce Williams, “Pray”

Feu Marinho, “Sopro do Mar”