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Living With Your Heart is a website for people living with heart disease, or with a person who has heart disease.   This site is a compilation of all that I’ve learned in the decade since my husband had a heart attack and a quintuple bypass.

My name is Lisa Rosen.  I am a 40-something housewife in central North Carolina; I have a husband (Lee), two children (Toby and Delaney), and the unseen but omnipresent  member of our family—heart disease.

I love food—I’m one of those folks who lives to eat.  I love everything about food:  planning, shopping, cooking, eating—I even love to grow my own food!  I obsess over restaurants; we route our road trips according to distances between Cracker Barrels.  There are cookbooks stashed in almost every room of our house, and yes, I read them.  Cover to cover.  As soon as lunch is over, I’m planning dinner, and sometimes I don’t even wait that long.  Oh, and I’m all about the baked goods; my marshmallow-fudge brownies are known far and wide.

But when my husband had a very scary heart attack and a quintuple bypass at the ripe old age of 37, my food preoccupation took on a different flavor entirely. I had to re-learn everything I knew about cooking—and nutrition.  When I came out of the fog of fear and shock after his surgery, I got to work and revamped our kitchen and our eating habits.

After more than a decade of living with Lee’s heart disease, I have become something of a go-to gal for friends, neighbors, and relatives who find they suddenly need to move toward a healthier lifestyle.  My learning curve was sharp and steep; I have begun this blog in an effort to perhaps soften that curve for you.

In those early days, right after we got home from the hospital, what I wanted more than anything was a guide—someone to tell me what I needed to do to cope, to adjust, to fix our lifestyle and our health, or maybe just how to stop crying.  That’s what I want this site to be for you:  a friendly voice, a supportive community, and a valuable resource.

The blog is up and running, and I’m adding to the resource/how-to/recipe pages daily.  If you have specific questions or concerns, I’ll do my best to answer them, or try to point you toward someone else who can.  I’m not a medical doctor, but I do have years of experience with a heart-healthy lifestyle.

Come on in and have a look around; stay for a chat, leave a comment, and tell a friend!  We’re here to help.