I’m still here…

Readers and friends,

I want to say thank you for the wonderful support you’ve given me simply by buying, reading and enjoying my work. The emails I receive when one of my stories touch your heart or excite you are the things that keep me going.

This has been a tough year for me, and I haven’t been as prolific with the books as I normally am, but I’m hoping that in the new year, I will be back on top of my game.

I thought about keeping this to myself, and just dealing with it, but I feel I owe you a reason you haven’t been able to find any new Anna Leigh Keaton releases for a long time.

About 10 years ago I was diagnosed with an ASD (Atrial Septal Defect) in my heart. Simply put, I have a hole in the wall between the right and left side of my heart. I put off surgery for a long time because first I was just getting my writing career off the ground, and then because my cardiologist said there’d been no change in 5 years, so maybe it didn’t actually need to be fixed. I’d undergone a procedure in ’05 where they tried to close it using a catheter, but that failed to work, so the only course of action after that was open-heart surgery. Well, when the cardiologist even hinted that maybe it wasn’t necessary, that’s what I went with.

A couple of years ago I started becoming symptomatic. Shortness of breath and extreme high blood pressure whenever I exerted myself. I was sent to a surgeon who said it had to be fixed, ASAP, but, I had to lose 65lbs before he’d cut me open. I’m overweight, I’m diabetic, and he wasn’t going to take the chance of something going seriously wrong. That was almost 3 years ago.

Long story short, I lost half the weight and then seriously tore up my shoulder, so I could no longer work out with weights. Because of the breathing issue, the only exercise I could do for 2 years was walking, on flat ground, and not fast. December of last year, in a last-ditch effort, I went on the Ideal Protein diet plan and was able to get the rest of the weight off needed for the surgery.

I am scheduled to go under the knife October 4th. I have one of the best surgeons in western Canada, and everything should go well.

I have spent the last year concentrating on my health, and dealing with the anxiety of willingly getting my chest cavity cracked open. Therefore, my creativity has fallen to the wayside and my muse went on a nice long vacation somewhere warm and quiet. I have a call into her and should be hearing from her soon.

Thank you again for being so wonderful to me as a writer. You are the reason I do what I do, and I feel a little guilty I’ve failed to fulfill what you expect from me.

I promise that 2014 will be a fresh start for me, and I hope you will hang in there with me for just a few more months.

From my heart,

Leanne aka Anna Leigh