Week of February 9, 2026

This week every year is always a week that creeps up on me but one that I feel I need to mark in some way. On February 10, 2007, when I was 39 years old, I had a heart attack. It wasn’t something I ever expected to experience in my lifetime, but I did. I remember being in the emergency room on that Saturday morning and explaining the pain and discomfort I was experiencing to the (male) doctor that was on call. He asked me if I had eaten spicy food for dinner the night before, or if I was constipated, or if perhaps I was afraid for my safety at home and was making this up as a cry for help. What?! In hindsight, I recognize that women often have had to come up with stories to escape from their abusers, and I was a female who physically did not look like she would be suffering from a heart attack. But when you’re in the ER and you’re not being “heard” it’s frustrating, and it seems to be a recurring problem for women in medical situations. The staff took blood and hooked me up to all of the equipment, etc. and after an hour had passed and we were waiting for results, the pain had subsided and I felt fine and felt silly and overly dramatic. My husband and I actually said to each other, let’s go pick up the kids (who were with a neighbor) and go get some pancakes or something and relax at home. At this point three or four nurses and doctors came crashing into the room with forms to sign and said, no you’re not going anywhere except upstairs to surgery, sign here. My bloodwork had showed signs of a significant cardiac event and they wanted to admit me immediately and do a cardiac catheterization to see what was going on. I ended up being in the ICU for 4 days, and got out on Valentine’s Day. The diagnosis? It turns out that I have an “arterial anomaly” that I’ve apparently always had but never knew about. My heart muscle has actually grown around my left descending artery, and so every time my heart pumps, it closes off the artery. Normally, this isn’t a problem at all, but I had what they called a “stress induced coronary spasm” that caused my heart muscle to stay clenched and held that artery shut for too long which triggered an MI. Surgery isn’t an option, and neither is medication, so they just said to keep stress at a minimum. And so that’s been my mission since 2007 - keep stress to a minimum. This is a long-winded introduction this week (sorry about that) but this week every year makes me a little bit introspective, hopefully understandably.

I started a new book on audio this week, Wolfsong by T.J. Klune. I’ve heard lots of wonderful things about this author, yet I’ve never read anything by him. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the book, but I’m enjoying it already. There’s not much dialogue in it, and there’s a lot of descriptive writing and self-reflective type writing, which I always enjoy, so I have high hopes. I’m also interested to read (listen to) this based on the fact that this is a male author whereas probably 98% of the books I read are written by female authors. I don’t choose my books that way - it just seems to be the way it is for the genres that I enjoy, I suppose.

As you’re reading this, Ross and I are in sunny southern California. Well, we’re in southern California, but the sun is in hiding. It’s currently raining. But it’s warmer here than we have been in Pennsylvania, so it’s still a win for me. We’re looking forward to getting outside without parkas on and getting some steps in and seeing some flowers blooming, all of which are good for the soul during this gloomy season we have on the east coast. My mother is here, escaping her cold weather in Idaho, so we’re visiting her for the week and keeping her company during her stay.

Thanks for joining me this week! Let’s dive in!

1. Remember My Name, by Rebecca Rathe ⭐️⭐️⭐️

2. Next Man Up, by L.A. Witt ⭐️⭐️⭐️

3. The Rest Is History, by Jen Samson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

4. Breathe The Sky, by Michelle Hazen ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

5. Yours To Save, by S. M. Landon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

6. The Inconvenient Love, by Briar Prescott ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Favorite read of the week? Yours To Save and The Rest Is History were both very good. Both are MM romance books (technically, The Rest is History is MMM romance) and both of these authors were new to me. Breathe The Sky was also a new author for me but I’ve heard good things about other books and look forward to other offerings from her in the future. This was a nice MF romance with mature characters and solid development instead of an over-abundance of spice.

That’s it for this week! As always, you can keep up with all of my reading on my Goodreads if you want to. https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12921106-karen

Love, Karen