Holding On For Dear Life: What My Fatal Diagnosis Taught Me About Living

In 2000, Liz DeVivo was a young mother and a Social Worker when she became ill with Scleroderma. Months later, she was devastated when diagnosed with another rare disease, severe Pulmonary Hypertension. The two rare illnesses made for a very poor prognosis and her health rapidly deteriorated, her only hope became a transplant. She blends her story with practical and beautiful insights on coping and surviving a catastrophic illness. Her book encourages and outlines the practical steps necessary to become an active participant in your own health care and includes a section on what health care professionals can do to help engage patients into a healing relationship. What follows is an uplifting, sometimes funny, heartbreaking, gritty and raw tale of how she made it through not only her illnesses, but her transplant and all the bumps, small pebbles and huge boulders, along the way.

Liz DeVivo lives in Upstate New York, but was born and raised in Woodside, Queens. She is a mother, a heart and double lung transplant recipient, a social worker, speaker, therapist and holistic life coach. She holds an MSW from the State University of New York in Albany and a Masters in Social Sciences from Binghamton University. She missed most of her thirties due to illness and now is happily making up for lost time.