Wendy Chapin Ford, author -- and survivor

To Get Back Home -- 
A Mysterious Disease: A Fight for Life

Wendy Chapin Ford survived and triumphed over a rare and deadly neurological disorder that struck from out of nowhere, leaving her comatose and then quadriplegic.  Initially, at one of the most renowned hospitals in the world, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, one of the great Harvard teaching hospitals in Boston, she was not expected to survive, nor subsequently, to ever walk again.  But she was desperate "to get back home" to her family and young children.  Her stirring and award-winning book, To Get Back Home -- A Mysterious Disease: A Fight for Life, recounts her harrowing odyssey.

Normalcy --
How one family made it through a devastating diagnosis:  A Primer for Dealing with Cancer

More recently, Wendy took on the writing of a book she hopes will help others faced with a devastating diagnosis, as she and her husband Bruce were with his cancer, several years later.  Normalcy -- How one family made it through a devastating diagnosis:  A Primer for Dealing with Cancer offers readers a clear and concise set of decisions, thoughts and actions that worked for their family as they navigated Bruce's illness. Wendy has made Normalcy, a collection of valuable and comforting lessons told with strength and tenderness, available as a free download through a Creative Commons license.  To read it, go to Dealing With Cancer: The New Book, Normalcy page.

A graduate of  the University of Michigan, Wendy worked as a corporate financial writer for many years in Boston. She has served on the Board of Overseers, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Visiting Committee, both in Boston, and the Board of the Newburyport Maritime Society. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.  

To learn more, go to the Ford Family Story page.