Newsletters
In the middle of the night, my husband, Jay, was rushed to the ER by ambulance with a kidney stone emergency. I couldn’t go with him because at the time our kids were too young to leave them home alone. I found him the next morning in a shared room with the curtain drawn. His…
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In a quiet, remote lab in the basement of a building at the University of Minnesota, Mimi was making gluten balls—and going crazy. She had been doing the same mind-numbing task for months. Her mood darkened with the shrinking daylight hours as winter loomed. A graduate student in food science, she was lucky to have a job and…
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We were heading toward the check-out line when an announcement came over the PA: “Attention Target Shoppers! Due to a tornado in the area, all customers must remain in the store. Please make your way to the back of the store and stay away from windows.” The announcement was unwelcome news at 7:30 pm. I’d…
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Signing a petition changed my life. It was the fall of 1981. Leafing through the member newsletter from the American Dietetic Association, I saw an announcement that some dietitians were forming a practice group in Sports and Cardiovascular Nutrition. The group would be called SCAN, and they needed signatures for a petition. I was finishing…
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“Mom, I’m not taking this note to my teacher,” ten-year-old Eric protested, while Karla shoved stuff into his backpack. “But Eric, your teacher needs to know these details about your blood sugar.” He grabbed his backpack and hollered, “Don’t send anymore notes to my teacher.” The door slammed shut. Twelve-year-old Emily rushed into the kitchen…
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Kim and Tom’s retirement dreams were shattered when Tom had a stroke five months ago. Married for 35 years, they live in a small town north of Cleveland. When Kim turned 60 three months before Tom’s stroke, she retired from her career as a social worker. Tom was a heavy-equipment operator, and they planned for him…
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Overwhelmed by the throng of people whooshing past me, I drifted to the outer edge of the pond, unaware that I’d wandered onto thin ice. Suddenly, the ice gave out under me—the next thing I knew I was up to my armpits in water, clinging to the edge of broken ice. The blue sky and…
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Lying in bed the evening of New Year’s Day 1999 in a hotel room, I palpated my abdomen and had a sinking feeling … something is really wrong. We were on a house-hunting trip to move our family with three small children (15 months, three years, and six years old) from Ithaca, NY to Minneapolis,…
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I heard my ankle pop as my foot twisted off the final step, and I collapsed at the bottom of the stairs. Pain shot up my leg. What a day! I’d spent much of it shuttling my kids to lessons and medical appointments during a blizzard. Driving was treacherous and scary. My husband was laid…
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My father fumed as he came out of a meeting with the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. It was the early 60s, and he had just pitched the need for the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL) to install a computer system. The Regents had summarily dismissed his proposal. One of the Regents had scoffed at…
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