How a Journal Can Save Your Life

**Charles Levin** (0:06)
Welcome back to The Munn Avenue Muse Podcast, brought to you by The Munn, M-U-N-N, avenuepress.com.
On our series, which is now close to 30 episodes, we like to share the experience of authors, many of whom we've had the honor of working with, as well as people who work in the publishing industry. And our audience is made up mostly of authors and avid readers. So I have a very special two guests for you today, Amy Lamb and her mother, Shirley. I'll tell you a little bit about Amy and a little bit about Shirley, and then their experience and how that led to this wonderful book called My Health Journal. So more to follow on that. But Amy is a certified health and wellness coach with nearly 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. Inspired by her personal journey and her family's health challenges, she created My Health Journal to help others take intentional steps towards well-being. When she's not coaching or writing, Amy enjoys hiking, cooking, and spending time in nature with loved ones. And Amy is accompanied today by her mom Shirley Lamb, who we understand to be the muse behind My Health Journal. It's nice to meet you, Shirley. We look forward to hearing more about how your experience inspired My Health Journal. So welcome to you both. Thank you for being here.

**Shirley Lamb** (1:52)
Thanks for having us.

**Charles Levin** (1:54)
So maybe I'll skip right to this, which is, why don't Amy and Shirley, you share how My Health Journal came about. And I'll ask you to read a little bit from the introduction in a minute. But just talk about what inspired this book and how you think it might help others.

**Amy Lamb** (2:14)
Sure. You want me to start and you add on? Yeah. So it was about five or six years ago. Mom started to lose muscle strength.
And she went through quite a lot of testing and a lot of doctors' appointments. And she received a diagnosis. And following that diagnosis, she underwent monthly treatments for the better part of four years, really. And throughout that time, have sort of a phrase that a friend uses, but I think it fits in this situation. She really experienced sort of every side effect but death. And we really, you know, questioned ourselves, question the doctors a lot at that time as to whether or not the treatment was doing what it was intended to do. And it ultimately was when mom and dad relocated here to North Carolina in transition of care that the new doctor had solicited some additional opinions and basically confirmed that mom was misdiagnosed. But not only was she misdiagnosed, she never had the thing that she was being treated for. And so I think that was eye-opening. But also, you know, along that way, you know, we asked a lot of questions. And what we sort of realized is that mom was the only person that was talking to all of the doctors. Really disconnected portals, disconnected communications. So we really realized it was very important to take notes and to really tell your story, I think. But what would you add? Anything I missed?

**Shirley Lamb** (4:05)
No, I think we just, we should have asked the question that first and then got second opinions and took more notes. We just thought the doctors knew what they were doing. And we didn't follow up on it.

**Charles Levin** (4:19)
Yeah. So with My Health Journal, when you have doctor visits or diagnosis, you can make notes about what they say, right? That's part of the idea. It's also helpful when you switch to doctors to have the past notes available too, right?

**Shirley Lamb** (4:40)
Right. If we hadn't moved, we'd still be up there in Maryland doing the same thing, still getting those treatments.

**Charles Levin** (4:49)
Yeah. Yeah. So what's changed now that you've moved? Has the situation improved? Have you been able to address it?

**Shirley Lamb** (4:58)
Oh, yes. We don't have that diagnosis anymore. So we're seeing different doctors and we don't get treated for that anymore.

**Amy Lamb** (5:05)
And you've done a lot of physical therapy and strength training. When we moved, mom was in a wheelchair, pretty much, and she now, she walks, she walks with the help of a walker, but that is a significant stride from where we were.

**Shirley Lamb** (5:21)
Yes, it is.

**Charles Levin** (5:23)
So did the misdiagnosis lead to a treatment that had a negative impact on you?

**Shirley Lamb** (5:30)
I had to get infusions for those four years.

**Charles Levin** (5:33)
Wow.

**Shirley Lamb** (5:34)
They weren't very good at giving needles, so my arms would be black and blue all the way up. And here, they know how to give needles, so you can't even tell.