MSI Press Blog

  a happy Shenan (CB) lounging with a happy Murjan  March 1 and business taxes loom big: due the Ides of March. (Not a very perspicacious day....) So, I thought I would give myself a little extra time, not prepare a new column of my own making, and simply share a delightful youtube video by one of our authors, Joanna Charnas. She says, " Happy Cat, Happy Life! " An oldie, but goodie! Enjoy! For more Caturday posts, click HERE .   For more posts about Joanna and her award-winning books, click  HERE .    For book reviews, interviews, videos, and more, check out Joanna's title pages at the MSI Press website:  100 Tips and Tools for Managing Chronic Illness,   A Movie Lover's Search for Romance ,  Living Well with Chronic Illness   and  Tips, Tools, and Anecdotes to Help during a Pandemic . To purchase copies of any MSI Press book at 25% discount, use code FF25 at  MSI Press webstore . Want to read an MSI Press book and not have to...

  Colon cancer continues to be better understood -- and findings show that we can do some things to prevent it. Not always, not with certitude, but definitely in some cases, colon cancer may be avoided or delayed.  I worry about our son CB. As Carl's son who is the spitting image of his father, likes the same things, including foods, and as a mentally challenged individual fights any changes to what he likes, he is, I worry, a candidate for colon cancer -- or some other kind of cancer. Carl ultimately had five kinds before he died though death came swiftly after diagnosis. As a Charge Syndrome adult, CB cannot be safely scoped. No colonoscopies mean no early detection. So, his gastroenterologist, dietician, and I are left to try to manage his diet wisely, which, of course, he fights -- but we keep at it.\ What are some of the things we have learned? Check the out here: I’m a cancer dietitian — here are 13 easy ways to lower your risk for colon cancer Nearly Half of Cancer Deat...

Happy Cat with his best pal, CB Leaver When you have a family of cats, you end up facing some of the same difficult decisions that human families face, the most difficult among these being end-of-life issues.  A couple of months ago, Happy Cat changed overnight from happy to sad. One day he was his affectionate self, nurturing the other cats; the next day, he was walking in circles, stumbling into his food bowl, and acting confused--and was clearly blind. After local vets ruled out physiological reasons for the behavior and the blindness, we took him to a neurology center for an MRI. He has a brain tumor, a melangioma. Options we were given included very expensive surgery ($15K), radiology (nearly as expensive and would require frequent out of town trips), or medicine (that would not cure or even put him into remission but would make him more comfortable).  Beyond the expense of the surgery, there was a bigger picture. Happy Cat is a geriatric cat, a street rescue between the ...

  Today's back story is about the book, Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest  by Shenan (CB) Leaver with Betty Lou Leaver. From the co-author: CB Leaver , the author, is a mentally challenged CHARGE Syndrome adult who never learned to read or write. His mother, Betty Lou Leaver, a highly published author, who wanted her son to understand the purpose of the written word: sharing thoughts and/or information with others. It took a full year of working together to put CB's remembered stories on paper, to check that they had been accurately transcribed. CB learned a lot about the written word both in the process of writing and in getting feedback from pre-publication readers of the manuscript. CB subsequently did a book signing at the Los Angeles Book Fair. He had a great time learning about reader reactions to his book. He was also adept at using his people skills and humor to draw readers to his booth.  Book available at 25% discount with code FF25 at msipress.com/shop. Read exce...

  Excerpt from Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest (CB Leaver) - The Man in Our Dumpster When I was growing up, Daddy, Mommy, and all of us kids (sometimes we were four, sometimes we were six or seven) lived in a big house with 13 rooms in Salinas, California. When we finished growing up, Daddy got a hankering for the forest and Mommy got a hankering to give up cleaning 13 rooms all the time. So, they decided to buy an RV, travel when they could, and park it in the riverside woods of Arroyo Seco at other times where they lived comfortably and Mommy enjoyed a daily dip in the river. Moving out of 13 rooms was big business. Daddy and Mommy had quite a list of things to do: cleaning, giving away or selling stuff that would not fit in the RV, packing things to take with them, throwing away trash, and lots of other things (like changing addresses with businesses and the post office). One day when Daddy was out doing the lots of other things, Mommy held a yard sale. One of the people w...

excerpt from Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest The Babysitter When I was smaller, Mommy sent me to church every Sun­day morning. The church van always came at 9:15 to pick me up, and Mommy was always rushing to get me ready on time. One Sunday morning a man came to the door at 9:10. Mommy could not believe that the van was five minutes early. She always counted on those five minutes to get me ready. Usu­ally, no one came to the door, so she figured that they must have been sitting there for a while. She started to hurry. “Just a minute,” she said, leaving the door open. She quickly grabbed my suit coat and put it on me. “I just have to comb his hair; it will just be a second,” she called to the man at the door as she darted into the bathroom after a comb. A few seconds later, I looked mighty spiffy. “Almost ready,” she called out again, as she rushed upstairs to get my Bible and offering. Whew! She had never got me ready so fast. “Here he is,” she said, out of breath, as she pushed me out...