Dying to Survive: Not in Vain, A Promise Kept Explores Life and Death Impact of Patient Advocacy
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They were killing her mother with negligence, Melissa Mullamphy recalls. And eight months later, Mullamphy’s mother succumbed following a cancer battle fraught with frustration, medical missteps and the endless bureaucracy that goes hand in hand with navigating our complex healthcare system.
Not in Vain, A Promise Kept is Mullamphy’s candid account of her mother’s journey and the family’s roller coaster of emotions. Readers will witness the mistakes that compounded their pain, the small victories that gave them hope, and above all, the love that kept them going during an indescribably difficult time.
Each chapter in Not In Vain, A Promise Kept represents one month from her mother’s diagnosis to her passing. Mullamphy recalls the experiences with vivid detail (the names of doctors and nurses have been changed), hoping to prompt others to ask the tough questions and learn by her example.
“My goal in writing this book is to keep the promise that I made to my mom … to share her story so others don’t go through what she and my family went through,” Mullamphy says. “You can have input, control and make a difference in your loved one’s healthcare.”
Mullamphy shares shocking lapses in her mother’s care, including blood clots the doctor fails to notice, the confusion surrounding her mother’s DNR order, the time she found her mother wearing another patient’s bracelet and the unspeakable heartbreak of learning that that all along, the hospital had used the wrong type of chemotherapy drug for her mother’s specific cancer.
Not In Vain, A Promise Kept is not without moments of hope, such as when the family is told the tumor has shrunk and when her mother’s last-ditch surgery to remove the tumor is declared “wildly successful.”
Ultimately, Not In Vain, A Promise Kept pays homage to a life well-lived and a woman well-loved, and it’s Mullamphy’s aim to help other patients and their loved ones find their voices, understand their rights and learn how to navigate a deeply complex, imperfect healthcare system.
“Use your voice, and remember that you are not there to make friends,” she adds. “Sometimes you have to be the biggest mouth in the room, but speaking up can save your loved one’s life.”
Author Melissa Mullamphy has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and has worked in psychiatric emergency rooms and step-down houses. Forever a student of mental health, she has also worked with many nonprofits, including those benefiting military veterans. For almost 20 years, she worked as a domestic operations manager for a major corporation. Following her experience with her mother’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, she began blogging about current events as they relate to healthcare.
Not in Vain, A Promise Kept ISBN-10: 1734802634 ISBN-13: 978-1734802634 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, http://www.melissamullamphy.com and many other online outlets
Trish Stevens Corinne Walker Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Locked in the Endless Loop of Foster Care, One Desperate Boy Struggles to Break Free
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Silas Dillon enjoys a full life now. At 40 years old, he’s a married father of four, foster father of six and minister to his church’s devoted flock. The joyful background noises of his houseful of children is a stark contrast to his lonesome beginning, when his birth mother, in the throes of heroin withdrawal, abandoned him the day after he was born.
Silas Dillon of Cary County is the sobering story of Silas Dillon, who ping-ponged between eight foster homes and two attempts at re-placement with his birth mother by the time he was 14 years old.
Told with gripping authenticity by author Cliff Schrage, Silas Dillon of Cary County begins with Silas’ birth on a frigid winter night in the fictional suburb of Cary Island in the New York Bay. His life becomes a series of glimpses into different realities — some harsh and grossly neglectful; some unapologetically abusive; and some well-intentioned but unprepared. Each one serves as a gross reminder of the fractured, overwhelmed foster care system. Silas is repeatedly transplanted from house to house, but none of them becomes a home. And occasionally, his mother does just enough to satisfy a lenient judge, and he’s returned to her world of drug abuse and prostitution
Damaged, fragile and without hope, he draws the attention of conscientious young social worker Molly Fresh, and this sets the stage for Silas to one day find the nurturing family and promising future that every child deserves.
Silas Dillon of Cary County is a candid look inside a typical foster care system that outwardly champions for the best interest of the children, but in reality, caters to the see-sawing whims of biological parents. Readers will witness Silas’ growing loneliness, alienation, anger and self-destructive nature, as he struggles to cope through his youth and early adulthood. Silas Dillon represents hundreds of thousands of young ones locked in a broken system. Will he be one of the lucky few who break free?
Author Cliff Schrage is a two-time published novelist — A Fruitful Field and Silas Dillon of Cary County — and published poet: Broken Prose, Spoken Poems. He has worked as a chaplain, and he taught high school English for 33 years. He is the father of eight children — two biological and six adopted (foreign and domestic) — and has endured the trauma of losing a child to a terminal illness. He has been married to his wife, Sherry, for more than 40 years.
Silas Dillon of Cary County Publisher: Morgan James Publishing ISBN-10: 1683502833 ISBN-13: 978-1683502838 Available from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and MorganJamesPublishing.com
Trish Stevens Sophie Carter Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone 800.854.2207 Fax
Trish Stevens Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
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Revolutionary Method Can Break Endless Cycle Of Emotional Overeating
The solution to overeating and belly fat is shockingly simple. The root cause of overeating and weight gain is in the emotional brain. Our traditional approaches treat the thinking brain, that is, we are treating the wrong brain. As Laurel Mellin, Ph.D., explains in her breakthrough book, The Stress Eating Solution: A Proven, Neuroscience Method for Ending Overeating, we need emotional tools to solve problems rooted in the emotional brain. During more than 30 years of research, Dr. Mellin crafted a way to take charge of the emotional brain. In her method, cravings and urges to overeat can be good for you. They activate the emotional wire that triggers overeating, and only when activated, can we rewire it. In her method, when cravings occur, instantly using the tools both shuts off the craving and begins to rewire the circuit that triggers it.
In an amazing about-face, all based on cutting edge neuroscience, Dr. Mellin delivers a program to “go to the emotional gym” daily to practice shutting off cravings, celebrating each small but important victory in clearing out the stress wires in the emotional brain that cause us to overeat.
The Stress Eating Solution walks readers through 30 days of effective strategies to transform their food, mood, love, and body circuits using Dr. Mellin’s proven method of Emotional Brain Training (EBT). Readers can experience immediate benefits, and using this method over time will promote lasting results. Dr. Mellin’s program is the only weight method other than surgery that has been shown in peer-reviewed research to produce lasting weight loss. For the first time, her methods are available to the public through this new book.
Readers will gain valuable benefits to ultimately help them:
1) Answer that nagging question, “Why do I overeat?” Overeating is caused by chemical surges unleashed by stress wiring. Yes, we are chemically driven to overeat. 2) Figure out why we can’t stop. We can’t stop because the wire in our brain tells us that we get our love, safety, comfort or pleasure from overeating. 3) Shut off cravings in real-time, so a new sense of peace, confidence and power replace the self-judgment and shame of repeatedly losing the war against carb cravings. 4) Use the tools repeatedly to transform the drive to get love/safety/comfort/pleasure from overeating into the drive to eat healthy, be vibrant and have joy in our lives.
We have thousands of diets, and people know what they should do; it’s just that they can’t do it. That powerlessness and the resulting self-blame are what harm us. Knowing what to do or being mindfully aware works in low-stress times, but research has shown these approaches are ineffective at the high stress levels of modern life. We need emotional tools, and The Stress Eating Solution offers these tools and more, to help readers end their cravings for unhealthy foods, regain control of their lives and move forward with improved overall well-being.
Dr. Mellin is also introducing a new mobile app, Brain Based Health by EBT, which can help readers use the tools in real time to stop craving and binge eating at the time the urge arises.
Laurel Mellin, Ph.D., is a New York Times bestselling author; health psychologist; Associate Clinical Professor, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco; and founder of the Emotional Brain Training (EBT) method. She is also the leader of the Brain Based Health Movement, mobilizing individuals, universities and corporations to access the natural pathway in the brain to rapidly get from stress to joy. She has been a faculty member at UCSF for more than 30 years, and her work has been featured on KQED public television, Oprah, Today, Good Morning America, and in U.S. News & World Report, Time, The Conversation, Psychology Today and many more. Her method was named one of the “Top Ten Medical Advances of the Year” by Health magazine. Dr. Mellin’s credentials are from the University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and North Central University. She is a Ph.D. health psychologist, a Master’s level nutritionist, and has received government and health organization awards for her research and public education. Her two latest books are The Stress Eating Solution and The Stress Overload Solution, which give the public an opportunity to experience the 30-day, step-by-step way to learn how to become emotional superstars, and move through stress to joy, often in as little as four minutes, to stop cravings and stop the “stress buzzer” from being stuck on. Dr. Mellin is an internationally-recognized expert on obesity and stress.
To learn more, please visit www.ebt.org.
For Dr. Mellin’s six-part video series that explains the science behind why we overeat and how to stop, please watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syQ4MZ3AGBU&t=5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAzNzCias-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRkth8vOp-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h2VkzCFYjM&t=6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJiuKQI6brw&t=8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOCz-VgySfY
The Stress Eating Solution: A Proven, Neuroscience Method for Ending Overeating. Release Date: April 2019 Publisher: EBT Books ISBN-10: 0986410772 ISBN-13: 978-0986410772 Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Anna Lee Simpson Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
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Newsroom Dispute Turns Violent In Yellow, A Journalism Thriller
A principled news director, a ruthless female television manager known as The Barracuda and a corporate manager with a gambling addiction set the stage for a thriller where manipulation of the news for personal gain trumps journalistic integrity.
Yellow, by Jeanne Charters, takes readers into a newsroom of the 1980s at the highest-rated television station in Pennsylvania. Finley Smith is its news director. When she learns from her top reporter that the Pennsylvania Governor has hired a mob-owned construction company to repair a bridge in Pittsburgh, she plans to report it. Her unscrupulous station manager orders her to “leave it alone.” But when a reporter’s probe reveals dangerous truths about the construction company’s shoddy work, Finley opts to buck the system and run the stories. This sets in motion a deadly dispute.
Although Finley’s reputation is irreproachable, making it difficult to fire her, the station manager and corporate president conspire to have her eliminated.
Between the covers of Yellow, Charters expertly weaves a suspenseful web of ambition-fueled deceit, financial desperation and corruption that ultimately culminates in a grisly crime. A veteran of broadcast television, Charters draws from her own experiences to inform the character development and story arc, lending authenticity to every page.
Will Finley Smith emerge with the truth — and her life — intact?
Born in small-town Ohio, author Jeanne Charters is a veteran of the broadcast television industry. The former Vice President of Marketing for Viacom TV began her career in radio and TV marketing, where she proved to be an expert at writing and producing effective television campaigns. Her talents caught the eye of Viacom Television, and when they approached her with the position of Vice President of Marketing, she jumped at the opportunity. She would later open her own broadcast ad agency, Charters Marketing. For years, she traveled to television stations from New York to Hawaii, producing and placing television and radio campaigns for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. At the same time, Charters worked with select local retailers on their campaigns.
Charters grew up believing she’d be a stay-at-home mom and live in her hometown for the rest of her life, but life threw her curveballs. When her first husband took a job in Chicago, Charters experienced culture shock of the highest order. After four children and a divorce, Charters ended up in Albany, New York, where she met and married Matt Restivo, her husband of 35 years and counting. When it came time to retire, Jeanne and Matt moved to Asheville, NC, and she began writing in earnest: columns for magazines and newspapers and finally, novels.
To learn more, please visit jeannecharters.com or connect with her on Facebook at Shanty Gold or at Jeanne Charters, or on Twitter at Write that Story.
Yellow (TV News Corrupted by Political Muscle) Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press Release Date: August 2019 ISBN-10: 1624205046 ISBN-13: 978-1624205040 Available from Amazon.com; BarnesandNoble.com; all other online retailers; Malaprops Book Sellers, Asheville, NC; the Book House, Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, NY; and other places where great books are sold.
Trish Stevens Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 281.333.3507 Main/Office 832.334.2733 Cell [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
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NY Times Bestselling Author William R. Forstchen Releases 48 Hours – How Would You Prepare For A Major Solar Storm?
As the New York Times bestselling author of the One Second After Series, in William R. Forstchen’s newest book, 48 Hours, the countdown is on. In less than 48 hours, the Earth will be struck by two, back-to-back, catastrophic solar storms. The second is a Coronal Proton Ejection (CPE) that threatens to kill all life on earth. These explosions will also severely damage the world’s electrical/electronic infrastructure. In a preemptive move to avoid permanent damage, global communications are shut down; hospital emergency generators are disconnected; the entire internet, media broadcasting, and cell phone systems are turned off.
A plan is implemented to ensure the survival of at least some people. But if the solar storm, a CPE, does hit, the question is: who will be granted access to government- controlled shelters and who will be left behind to face almost certain death? Each citizen will be asking ‘why is someone else being let into a deep shelter but not my family and me?’ The clock is ticking down with only 48 hours left to make those decisions and to prevent all social order from collapsing into anarchy.
Author William R. Forstchen paints a chillingly realistic picture of the frantic final days before a cataclysmic event in his realistic thriller, 48 Hours.
Forstchen holds a Ph.D. in history from Purdue University, with specializations in military history and the history of technology. He is currently a faculty fellow and professor of history at Montreat College, near Asheville, North Carolina.
48 Hours
Publisher: Forge
Released: January 8, 2019
ISBN-10: 0765397919
ISBN-13: 978-0765397911
Available from Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com and other online retailers
Trish Stevens
Ascot Media Group
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
281.333.3507 Phone
832.569.5539 Fax [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
The Rise of Esperanto: The Fate Of Mankind Rests On One Man’s Enlight-enment
New York, NY. In the year 2361, the world’s political structure teeters on the edge of disaster as tensions intensify between countries and continents. Vespacia’s military and business communities join forces, plotting to gain control of Esperanto in the face of its astonishing growth. Despite continued insistence to the contrary, world domination seems to be Vespacia’s ultimate goal.
Such is the world imagined by author Eliade Moldovan in The Rise of Esperanto, a thrilling work that dives deep into the cultural conflicts of futuristic, dystopian societies.
Amid the turmoil is Ovi, a simple and open-minded priest who opposes the escalating violence. Struggling with the meaning and evolution of understanding God and His means, Ovi finds himself at the head of a new religious faction, one that disagrees with hard-core believers in the Old Testament’s teachings. With his newfound status as leader of this prominent religious faction, Ovi is in a unique position to prevent the Vespacians from achieving world domination, even as he further questions the existence of God.
As the conflict between Vespacia and Esperanto spreads and becomes increasingly violent, Ovi works to find a lasting resolution, but will it come too late? In the midst of the madness of the widening war between Esperanto and Vespacia, the world’s fate lies in the hands of one very ordinary man and a benevolent alien god.
Born in Romania, author Eliade Moldovan and his wife enjoy vacations and have traveled around the world, exploring nature and undertaking the occasional adventurous trips. Moldovan is also the author of The World Ends Tomorrow.
Jonathon Meade Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com (281) 333-3507 Phone (832) 569-5539 Fax
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Stop The Fight! Offers Solutions For Issues That Ignite Emotions And Impede Communication
New York, NY – The first of its kind, this cleverly illustrated relationship guide helps couples literally see their way out of hurtful, repetitive arguments. Relationship conflict is complex and challenging to change. But in her work with couples, clinical psychologist Michelle Brody developed a way to make change a bit simpler. Using evocative drawings and diagrams that illustrate the hidden forces that drive the most familiar battles, Dr. Brody shows couples effective strategies for finding a way out in her new book, Stop the Fight! (The Experiment; $15.95; October 27, 2015; 978-1-61519-280-9).
Whether her clients were caught in the Partner Improvement Fight, the “You Don’t Care About Me” Fight, or the Difficult Relatives Fight, the pictures unlocked the destructive cycle. Her clients immediately “got it”—they could literally see with their own eyes what was blocking their bond, and together chart a course to recognize the triggers to fights … to end them. Stop the Fight! pairs more than 300 instantly graspable illustrations with Dr. Brody’s proven, pragmatic advice. It’s a one-of-a-kind relationship manual—concise, easy to use, and results oriented.
One of Dr. Brody’s colleagues aptly sums it up this way: “Over the years, Michelle has found that highlighting through diagrams and drawings some of the patterns in which clients get entrenched creates an “aha” moment for them and helps to lead them out of these destructive cycles…Stop the Fight! is all about the ordinary fights that happen between couples and how to stop them, but the helpful tools provided are applicable not just to couples, but to any collaborative dynamic – at home, work or anywhere in between.”
About the Author
Michelle Brody, PhD, is an executive coach and clinical psychologist with over 20 years of professional experience as a practicing therapist and a specialist in resolving relational conflict. Her background also includes extensive experience in teaching, coaching, and scientific research. She has served for more than a decade as a senior trainer for psychologists and as a business consultant, teaching others what will (and won’t) catalyze lasting change. Dr. Brody is the founder of Coaching for Couples, an innovative practice for couples seeking time-efficient change.
Available at: http://theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/fall-2015/stop-the-fight/ and online outlets Stop the Fight! How to Break Free from the 12 Most Common Arguments and Build a Relationship That Lasts Michelle Brody, PhD, with Illustrations by Emily Tomasik Publisher: The Experiment; (October 27, 2015) Language: English ISBN-10: 1615192808 ISBN-13: 978-1615192809
