Love in the Time of Chronic Illness ― How to Fight the Sickness--Not Each Other

Having made an emotional commitment, with or without marriage vows, most people expect their partners to care for them when a devastating diagnosis is made or an accident occurs. But amid the medical, financial, and logistical concerns, a couple's emotional relationship is often an unforeseen casualty when illness and injury occur. For most, a health crisis means both partners need to recalibrate their roles in the new reality of their relationship.

Love in the Time of Chronic Illness examines what happens when illness becomes part of a relationship, and includes dozens of real couples' frank stories about navigating the medical and relational mazes. These stories, along with practical and thoughtful guidance from a variety of experts in the medical, spiritual, and legal relams, help partners not just get through a crisis, but grow stronger as a couple.

Barbara Kivowitz, MSW, is a psychotherapist and health care consultant. She has worked with Stanford Health Care and Medical School, UCSF Cancer Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and other health care organizations, and their patients and family caregivers, to help them understand the benefits of a “relationship-focused” model of care. She is a frequent speaker at clinical and patient/caregiver conferences. She has direct experience helping couples and families living with illness through her work as a therapist and an advisor to a hospice. In addition, she has authored several articles on couples and illness, and on living with pain, one of which was published in Women’s Day and another in the journal of the American Pain Foundation. Her blog about couples and illness has been nominated for best literary and best patient blog. She served on the board of trustees of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates. She has graduate degrees from Harvard University and Simmons School of Social Work..

Roanne Weisman is an award-winning medical/science author of seven trade health books published by McGraw-Hill and Harvard Medical School, as well as Health Communications, Inc. Her co-authors include faculty of Harvard Medical School and leading academic medical centers. Her feature stories have appeared in magazines including Prevention, Country Living, Alternative Medicine, and Body and Soul, as well as magazines of Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, both teaching institutions of Harvard Medical School. She also writes regularly for online health education sites. She is the principal of the Write Way to Health, which provides communications consulting and editorial services to large organizations.