{"podcast":{"title":"Dying to Tell You","slug":"dying-to-tell-you-6678535","podcast_index_feed_id":6678535,"rss_url":"https://feed.podbean.com/dttypod/feed.xml","website_url":"https://dttypodcast.com/","image_url":"https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/17480442/Updated-Logo-2025.png","author":"Jamesy Media, LLC","episode_count":109,"summary":"Palliative Care Chaplain Cody Hufstedler knows how difficult it can be for us all to acknowledge—much less talk about—the fact that we’re all born with an expiration date. That we are, in fact, one day going to die. Through his career in healthcare, he has helped countless terminally ill patients and their loved ones work through this most challenging of life’s realities. What he’s discovered over the years is the understanding, comfort, even joy that can come through intentionally facing our finish line. Not just for those who are fast approaching it, but for everyone young or old, sick or healthy. Cody began this podcast as a way to share these endearing and lovely stories of life, death, and dying. Far from morbid, these episodes are deeply alive explorations of life’s greatest mysteries and windows into the wonderful, human richness of living. All music licensed through Artlist.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-03T20:19:28.353358+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/dying-to-tell-you-6678535"},"episode":{"title":"“I’m Turning to Stone”: Choosing to Live Fully with Scleroderma","slug":"i-m-turning-to-stone-choosing-to-live-fully-with-scleroderma","published_at":"2025-12-11T12:30:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/dying-to-tell-you-6678535/i-m-turning-to-stone-choosing-to-live-fully-with-scleroderma","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/dying-to-tell-you-6678535","url":"https://dttypodcast.com/episodes/s3e12-shutes","audio_url":"https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/i4e862g9rhnvqx74/S3E12_Shutes_FINAL6cvc9.mp3","summary":"“I’m part gargoyle is what I tell people. Because I’m turning to stone. I literally am.” Shutes was living the dream—college basketball national champion, Player of the Year, in the best shape of her life—when strange symptoms started appearing. Numbness in her hands. A sore that wouldn’t heal. She was initially misdiagnosed with lupus before a doctor recognized the signs and finally told her the truth: she has scleroderma, a rare and incurable autoimmune disease. Scleroderma causes the body to produce too much collagen, creating a kind of fibrosis that hardens the body from the inside out. As Shutes says with what you’ll learn is her incredible sense of humor—“I’m part gargoyle!” But of course, beneath that humor is the difficult reality of watching your hands curl into permanent contractures, your jaw dissolve, your lungs stiffen to 56% capacity, and food getting stuck in an esophagus that can no longer move it along. In this deeply honest conversation with Cody, Shutes explains the daily and long-term realities of living with this rare and rarely discussed disease, as well as the isolation that persists even when you have community, the relationships that end because people can’t handle your new reality, the exhaustion of coordinating every basic need, and the choice between living safely or living fully. She also opens up about navigating eating disorder recovery while her disease makes swallowing nearly impossible and feeding tubes loom on the horizon. She talks about losing the athlete’s body she once had, the grief of not being able to play basketball with her son, and the intentional choice she makes every day to go hard, crash, and get back up again. Because for her, it’s the living that’s most important. Consequences be damned...or at least accepted. Follow S…","meta_description":"“I’m part gargoyle is what I tell people. Because I’m turning to stone. I literally am.” Shutes was living the dream—college basketball national champion,…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3736,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/dying-to-tell-you-6678535/episodes/i-m-turning-to-stone-choosing-to-live-fully-with-scleroderma/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/dying-to-tell-you-6678535/i-m-turning-to-stone-choosing-to-live-fully-with-scleroderma.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}