The Late Report: Holiday 2012 Update

Nina and Booth’s Heartfelt Update for 2012

(I apologize for the bad line breaks- I imported the following text and Blogger is not formatting it properly.)

It is with a huge sigh of relief that we are putting this past year to bed. We have had one of the worst

years in the history of our love and lives together, and we are bruised, battered and stitched up, but

we are still here to send our greetings- a bit late, but better than never!

2012 started out on a beautiful note as we celebrated my 50th birthday on the garden island of

Kauai. We flew home to Seattle and continued to provide live-in help for my father, who was still in

depression, although I had finally gotten him to see a psychiatrist. In June we moved him into the

upscale and fabulous Ballard Landmark Gencare retirement community. We did all the moving

ourselves, and I fixed up his apartment to make it a show place. After a few weeks my father thanked

us and called us angels. Then one month later, on July 4th, he started going into mania...and

within another month he had fired his doctor, started drinking and smoking pot, and turned

violently against us as we tried to guide him away from egregious errors of judgement. This ended

in a very ugly manner, and I have since had to “divorce” myself from not only my father, but from

my past as well, as this has changed my concept of my foundation in so many ways.

Our foundations were then rattled again by Booth’s declining health. On Labor Day weekend Booth

confessed to me that he thought that he may have had a mild heart attack while riding his bicycle up

a steep hill. That set us down a rocky avalanche chute that led us to his diagnosis of “left main

disease,” and that led to triple bypass open heart surgery on December 7th at Swedish Cherry Hill

Hospital. Surgery went well, but post-op did not. On December 12th I had to call 911 and Booth went

to the ER and back into the hospital with a collapsed right lung. He lost over 2 liters of blood and had

3 transfusions. Booth is now facing thoracic surgery with Dr. Ralph Aye to remove blood clots in the

pleural cavity on January 4th. Then we hope the recovery will truly begin. We are ever so grateful for

the amazing team at Swedish, especially Dr. Joseph Teply, the cardio-surgeon, Gil Friedlander, the

Physicans Assistant whose sister lives on Lummi Island, many amazing nurses- our favorite was

Ulf, who was from Germany and he made us laugh... and the Ballard Fire Department and paramedics

who were at our house in less than five minutes and saved Booth’s life. We didn’t get to celebrate

Christmas or New Year’s Eve, but we have all the gifts we need- each other.

Despite all the trauma, work has gone on... Booth continues to work with R.E.Lee International and

X2 Bio (new name) and I am working on my books in between all of the stress. My next book, “Once

Upon A Memory” will publish with Little, Brown in December ‘13. It is the first time I am not illustrating-

Renata Liwska did the incredible art. I am currently working on 3 new board books for

Chronicle Books- and other book projects for the future.

Here’s hoping that 2013 brings all of us excellent health, happiness, love and success!

Our Love,

Nina and Booth