NEW BOOK JUST PUBLISHED

I have not been blogging lately because I have been busy trying to finish my new book:  Heart Disease, Cancer, and More: A Nurse's Memoir.

This book is a true story, written in a "storybook" style, containing "bits and pieces" of my life as a registered nurse, and includes some personal problems that impacted my life.  I worked primarily in intensive care units of local hospitals.  I tell some wild stories that transpired in some of the units that I worked in, and although I do not call anyone by name, I label them as "N" for nice, "BB" for badly behaved, and "M" for downright mean people.  This is a quick way to alert the reader about the personality of the people I am writing about in my story.

In random fashion, I write about a medical term or procedure as it comes up in the story.  I have included some brief definitions for the reader in order to educate and enlighten them.  I write primarily about terms regarding heart disease, because I did not like working with cancer patients.  I hated to watch them suffer.

The reader will find toward the end of my memoir that I personally contracted heart disease by 1999 which called for two cardiac stents to be placed in my heart.  By 2002, a year spawned straight out of the pits of hell, I contracted endometrial and pancreatic cancer, and my husband died of complications of both heart and cancer.  In 2004, I had to have another stent placed in my heart.  By 2006, I had to undergo open-heart surgery.

This is a book of survival, and I hope it gives hope to someone who is going through hard times.  Advice:  Keep your eye on the light at the end of the tunnel and press forward.  I am going full-steam ahead and I am an eleven year survivor of two kinds of cancer, and my heart is working well.

Life is good.  I life alone on a beautiful island in the Gulf of Mexico.  The people on this island are wonderful and I have made some very good friends.