Hi, I’m Heather.
I’ve been a patient for more than fifteen years. I had a heart attack at forty-two, with none of the usual risk factors. Three years ago my in-laws moved in with us, and I became a caregiver alongside being a patient. For two decades I’ve also worked inside healthcare technology — designing and building software used by payers, hospitals, and care teams.
Anyway Life is what I built from all of that. The writing, the podcast, the speaking, the practical guides — everything here is the working knowledge of a patient who learned the healthcare system the hard way, and the perspective of someone who has spent a career trying to make that system better from the inside.
Three things shape how I see this.
The first is fifteen years of chronic illness. I got sick at twenty-eight. I’d never really been sick before — annual physicals, the occasional doctor visit, the kind of body you don’t think about until you have to. That was the year I started learning the second job of being a patient: the phone calls, the records, the prior authorizations, the appeals, the slow accumulation of healthcare-navigation muscle that nobody teaches you and that becomes part of your life forever.
The second is the heart attack. In 2023, at forty-two, with no risk factors that the system was looking for, my body did something it wasn’t supposed to do. Women’s cardiovascular events are under-recognized, under-diagnosed, and under-discussed — and I had been a careful patient with a long medical history, and the system still almost missed it. After fifteen years of working the system from the patient side, that event made the writing inevitable.
The third is caregiving. Three years ago my in-laws moved in with us. I went from being a patient managing my own appointments and medications and insurance fights to also being responsible for two more adults’ care — the legal documents you’re supposed to have in place, the medication management for someone else’s body, the hard conversations about driving and memory and home and hospice. The sandwich generation, statistically. A whole life, lived inside healthcare in a different way again.
I’m writing about all of it because nobody handed me a manual for any of it.
Twenty years building the system I’ve also been navigating.
My career has been in healthcare technology — two decades leading product work on software used by payers, hospitals, and care teams across the United States. I’ve sat in rooms where decisions about patients get made by people who have never been the patient. I’ve also been the patient on the other end of those decisions.
That unusual vantage point shapes everything here. I understand how clinical workflows actually function, how healthcare organizations actually make decisions, how technology gets designed and deployed, and how all of it lands when you’re the person on the receiving end. Most patients don’t get to see both sides. Most professionals inside healthcare technology don’t live with chronic illness, haven’t had a heart attack at forty-two, aren’t caregiving in the middle of the workday.
What I do here is share what that combined view has taught me — in plain English, without the jargon, and with a respect for the reader who is in the middle of it.
The hardest part of healthcare isn’t the diagnosis. It’s everything that comes after. That’s what I write about.
Why “Anyway”
Anyway Life is rooted in a simple belief.
Life doesn’t always unfold the way we expect. Chronic illness can change plans. A heart attack at forty-two can rearrange a decade. A parent or in-law moving in can reshape a household. Plans get slower, smaller, or completely different. The picture of what strength and success look like gets revised.
And meaningful lives are still possible.
Anyway-living means learning to adapt, resting when necessary, advocating for yourself, and continuing to build a life that feels like your own — even when the path looks different than expected. It means doing the practical work of navigating healthcare while still being a full person. It means asking honestly what helps and what doesn’t. And it means refusing to wait for perfect health to start living.
Three places this work shows up.
Writing
Essays, guides, and practical frameworks. Three pillars: navigating care, caregiving, and living with illness. Read the latest in Insights →
Podcast
The Anyway Life Podcast — conversations on the life you build when health doesn’t cooperate. Launching this season. Get notified →
Speaking
Talks for healthcare conferences, patient communities, employers, and women’s health audiences. Lived experience, plainspoken. See talks →
Where this voice has been heard.
Conversations and features in publications I’m proud to be part of. If you’d like to feature this work, get in touch.
Her Health Story #9: Heather
“One of the clearest voices I have come across when it comes to naming what women with complex, chronic conditions are actually up against.”— Dr. Michelle FrankRead the feature →
The short version.
You’re not alone here.
If you’re navigating chronic illness, caregiving for someone you love, rebuilding after an unexpected diagnosis, or simply trying to live with more intention inside a body that’s changed — you’re not alone here.
Anyway Life exists to share honest conversations about health, identity, and the quiet ways people continue building meaningful lives.
One step at a time. Anyway.