MSI Press Blog

  Janice Hucknall Snyder was caregiver to her husband for twenty years.  He had Parkinson’s Disease, followed by dementia. She wrote about what she was experiencing during that time, as it was therapy for her. What followed is her book,  Survival of the Caregiver .  Janice loves playing bridge, doing photography, swimming laps, and writing poetry, some of which has been published . Janice also wrote a weekly column for  The Beaches Leader , called “On The Sunny Side,” for two years. For more posts about Janice and her book, click HERE . And yes, she is the sister of Nanette Hucknall. (You can read posts by and about Nanette HERE .)

  Excerpt from Survival of the Caregiver A Treasury of ABC Self-Help Words that Give Encouragement and Support to the Caregiver  by Janice Hucknall Snyder: ABILITIES are unique and varied in each individual. I hope your parents let you become the person you were meant to be. Did they? If so, then you have developed your own interests. You have been given the opportunity of becoming a happy and well-adjusted person. In which case, you are now better prepared mentally to deal with your current role as caregiver. In fact, all the problems that face you during your lifetime will be more manageable. It is a tragedy when a child is expected to follow in his/her parent’s footsteps. Many times, it leads to failure, depression and even self-destruction. Ultimately, some of these people end up requiring a caregiver—sad but true. When you are comfortable with who you are, you are better able to respond in affirmative ways to all others. When your life is smothered in negativ...

Being sick is the pits! The authors of these recommended books know. They are not only experts; they have also lived the experience. Read one, read them all! They are available at discount from MSI Press webstore (use code FF25 for a 25% discount). All are available on Kindle. How to Be a Good Mommy When You're Sick Soon after receiving her Bachelor's Degree, Dr. Emily Graves was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and given a prognosis that she would be confined to a wheelchair within ten years. Shortly thereafter, pregnant with her first and only child, Emily's kidneys shut down. Thus, began a new chapter in Emily's life: balancing chronic illness, motherhood, and the professional ambitions that had caused her to excel as an academic and meet her husband. Today she is still fighting chronic illness, but she has found some answers as to how to manage that fight while being a good mother and spouse and continuing to pursue her professional ambitions. In this...

                             One of the fun things that a publisher (or at least, an acquisitions editor) gets to experience is meeting more than one member of a family -- as an author whose work we publish. Today, we introduce the Hucknall sisters, Janice and Nanette.  Janice Hucknall Snyder's book, Survival of the Caregiver , is an older book, but it is a good one, and one that does not really have a parallel for caregivers. The paperback edition is available at the MSI Press webstore on significant discount. Nanette's books have been published before and after Janice (Hucknall) Snyder's book. Nanette's books include The Rose and the Sword (co-authored with Judith Bach) and How to Live from Your Heart   (currently on deep discount on Amazon). How to Live from Your Heart has earned multiple awards:  Pinnacle Achievement Book Award Book of the Year Award finalist Best Books Award finalist Book ...

  Now available from Kindle: audiobook edition of Survival of the Caregiver by Janice Snyder. Book Description:  Survival of the Caregiver" is the result of all the author's ins and outs, ups and downs of caring for her husband for 20 years when he had Parkinson's Disease, followed by Dementia. This book is written from the heart. It is as personal as it is informative. The author chose to use an alphabetical list of topics so that a busy caregiver can refer to a special need quickly. It is the author's hope that this book will aid other caregivers in their sad, but meaningful journey with their loved one. Read more posts about Janice and her book HERE .    To purchase copies of this book at 25% discount, use code FF25 at  MSI Press webstore . Want to buy this book and not have to pay for it? Ask your local library to purchase and shelve it. Sign up for the MSI Press LLC monthly newsletter (recent releases, sales/discounts, awards, reviews, Amazon top 100 list,...

  ANGER needs to be verbalized and needs an outlet. Show me a caregiver who says he or she never gets angry, and I’ll show you a liar or a saint.  Once, a patient who was 75 years old came into my office. She had been caring for her 97-year-old mother for ten years. I told her I was a caregiver, too, and remarked that I thought caring for someone else when you were 75 must be most difficult. With a sheepish look on her face she said, “You know, I’m ashamed to tell you this, but sometimes I get very angry." I responded, “Of course you do; that’s only natural. I get angry, too.”  She looked astonished. “You do?” she said, “I thought I was the only one.” I couldn’t believe my ears. I assured her that most caregivers experience this strong emotion more often than they would like to admit. She was very happy and relieved to hear that.  There is no way you can keep from feeling angry about seeing your loved one suffering and about having acquired such tremend...

  (diagram and contents of diagram from Beth Frates via Twitter) Literature gives suggestions for caregiver as if life is calm and caregivers are never angry or stressed out (implying that it is wrong to be so). The reality is that even in the best of circumstances, i.e. the existence of good support systems, caregivers do burn out . Thinking that other caregivers do not and that it is wrong to be angry or somehow even to instinctively respond with an unkind word or behavior is somehow is unique and makes one a bad person creates quite a guilt trip later.  In normal, circumstances, caregivers become sleep-deprived. Sleep deprivation leads NATURALLY to short tempers, frequent frustration, and, yes, bad decisions. Individuals' decisions that are made while sleep deprived cannot be thought of as intentional or well considered. At one point, I was so sleep-deprived that I fell asleep and drove off the road and into a field of cabbage (fortunately, I was not on a major highway), w...

  Choosing hospice is choosing to die. That may sound like a stark statement, but it is, in my experience, a true one. Now, when confronted with cancer, one can choose to live at home, not receive treatment, and not be in hospice--at least, for most of the course of the disease. That is what my sister-in-law did. She chose to die naturally and not fight nature, in part because she had no insurance (and did not want to rack up major debt for her husband or jeopardize their life savings and house) and in as much part due to her religious beliefs. She did go on hospice during the last six weeks of her life; she needed medical attention, and the hospital, to which she was ambulanced, moved her to in-patient hospice as a compromise. She was placed in a very nice New Hampshire hospice, Hyder Family Hospice House , known simply as Hyder House. Not all hospices are this attentive, gentle with the family, well-appointed in interior ambience and amenities, or surrounded by such beautifu...

  Times were tense. I was caregiving for my husband, dying from cancer and on chemotherapy that required multiple trips a week to a distant hospital, my spina bifida daughter in a city a half-hour away who had lost her caregiver during the days of covid, and a CHARGE Syndrome adult son living at home -- and trying to run a business at the same time. The son tried to help out as best he could with his own care, but he did not always have the skills to do so. To wit, the scene above that ensued when he tried to help out by making his own breakfast -- one that at least brought a moment of levity into a too-tense life. Speaking from personal experience, the spouse (in this case wife, but it really does not much which spouse is pressed into the role) who ends up as the caregiver for a cancer patient is in a no-win situation, emotionally and physically. The role of spouse is to support the spouse and to navigate through life together, IMHO. That complicates the matter of caregiving. The ...

  It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  This week's conversation addresses the benefits of "twinning" as a book writing and publishing option. Twinning refers to when a new book resembles an older book. MSI Press has several such twins in its book collection. Let's look at ways twinning at help with book sales -- and what are the various models for twinning, noting upfront that twinning is not the same as producing a series since, with twinning, the books are by different authors. Here are some twinning options among MSI Press books. Using other (successful) books as models for format In this case, an author follows the formatting (or approach) of another author....