My name is David. A little over ten years ago, my life took a drastic turn when I found myself being wheeled through the emergency department at my local hospital. After a long year of running conflicts at work and home, I pushed myself beyond my limits and collapsed on the floormats of a martial arts center. My first heart attack revealed three major blockages of my coronary arteries. The following weeks of my life became entirely about survival, and the passing years saw me surrender every long-held dream I had for my life.

Hamburger Heart is the story of my journey through a critical point where my non-stop struggle to survive collides with the distillation of all my ambitions from my former life into the one true dream I had for myself since I was a kid. I take the chance and risk everything on an impossible quest to hold on and heal my permanently broken heart. It’s a story filled with spectacular failure, unrelenting uncertainty, and tiny glimmers of hope that sees me everywhere from drooling on the floor to standing triumphantly on top of snow-covered mountain peaks.

From finding love to the devastation of good bye, I try to connect the dots in my life while constantly dodging pitfalls, pushing past setbacks, and navigating non-stop medical crises. Somewhere along the way I meet a really cool dog that stays with me through blizzards, experimental treatments, fad diets, and honestly has this great and important story all on her own. I often get the feeling that I shouldn’t still be here, but I am. I hope that you’ll find something good in our story that you can take away as your own.

This blog is organized into a few categories, please feel free to browse around. My book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback or for Kindle. Please reach out if you’re one of the nicknamed characters in my book if you’d like a personalized copy. We’re always happy to hear from you.

On Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 6 PM, I’ll be hosting a maker presentation at MakeICT in Wichita, Kansas. Maker presentations are an exhibition for makers that show off the work and allow makers to learn about the processes involved in the creation of the work. In addition, I’ll be holding discussion about any of the subjects I covered in the book from navigating health crises to traveling the country with your dog in a van.

The event is free and if you’re in Wichita on Thursday, please feel free to stop by MakeICT 6-8 PM. I’ll have some light refreshments and a handful of copies of the book for sale. I’ll also be presenting MakeICT with a copy of my book to display.

One of the technical skills I picked up from MakeICT went into publishing my book – namely an introduction to Inkscape that was necessary to receive authorization to use the laser cutters at the maker space. The Legend-of-Zelda-like halfheart logo, as well as the text and other elements of the cover were created on Inkscape as vector graphics so they could be printed at any resolution without a loss in sharpness or quality. In addition, I did some of my editing and writing of my book at their facility in southeast Wichita. With thanks, I’ll be donating a copy to MakeICT to display.

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From the version printed since March 21, 2026:

• Misc: partial lines at the ends of pages are pulled across the whole page in some sort of strange text justification.
• Back Cover: “decade of navigating recurring medical crisis” -> “crises”
• Page 9: “But I also about to learn” -> “I was”
• Page 21: “leash taught enough” -> “taut”
• Page 63: “would only yield only 600 feet” -> “about”
• Page 71:”and she now looked to me now like”

This post will be updated as new errata are discovered. At some point I’ll update the printing manuscript with these corrections and add a printing version to the copyright page. Please feel free to comment if you notice issues that aren’t already covered.

It’s been two years in the making and I can’t believe that I’m such a big slacker, but you can now order a copy of my book. Within the next few weeks I’ll also make Hamburger Heart available on Kindle and record the audiobook version. The most difficult thing about this whole process was the level of introspection required to write the story about what already happened in my life, of which I am now doubly over. I highly doubt I will ever make enough money to recover the costs, but thankfully, I wrangled my manuscript until I felt like having it printed.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTMBS88M

I’ll be posting some snippets and profiles of the personalities in my book. For everyone that was waiting, thank you for your support. I’ll reach out to the folks I have a signed copy for, but I certainly won’t hold it against you if you order another copy anyway. I receive a couple bucks from the sale of each paperback so I won’t be complaining. In the coming weeks I’ll also publish for Kindle and record the audiobook version.

Oh, and one more thing. The people mentioned in my book are referred to by generic nicknames. There are many people that are just as important to me as the ones in my novel that I chose not to write about because I limited talking about other people to the ones I felt were essential to telling the intended story of Hamburger Heart. I also hired a trusted editor to evaluate the fairness of my representation of the people in my book. Don’t worry, Hamburger Heart is no diss track.

Oh, and there are some pictures in the back. I know some of you just need to know and that’s okay too.