The loss of an amazing woman

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Rosemary Quigley was one of my sisters close friends in high school. I didn't know her well, but she was an amazing person. Anyone could tell that. She was born with Cystic Fibrosis and not expected to live beyond her teen years. Rosemary was strong. She did ballet as a kid, was a competative swimmer in high school, went on to become a lawyer and an assitant professor of medical ethics. No small wonder, that last career of hers. She lived her life like someone who knew that death was around the coner. She never welcomed it, but she knew she could lose her life from complications of her disease.

A year ago she was in decline, less than a year ago she was given a new set of lungs, last May she got married, and this week she passed away.

Rosemary's Blog

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That's wonderful that she did so much with her life.

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Really sorry to hear that Rosemary is gone, littlek. What a remarkable story of her life and how sad that her star burned out so fast. I imagine she had a special grasp of medical ethics and her students loved her.

http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/HawaiianStarlight/AIOM/English/2003/Images/Dec-Image2002-CFHT-Coelum.jpg

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I think she did so much more with her life, I just don't know about all the details. She had guilt about recieving the lungs and really wanted to be very careful and to survive so that to put them to the best use.

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Ack - I shall read the blog, Little k. Thank you.

That is what my sister died from - but kids died very young then - she was 10. It is good to see folk at least having some real chance at life.

Mind you, each life is complete in its own way, I believe.....

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The blog is good, as it's from a unique perspective.

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It is too bad that she felt guilty about the lungs -- I think it is such a new technique that her experience may be helpful in perfecting it.

How amazing to have a new set of lungs...

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I have a client who has had a lung transplant over the time I have known her - but because of primary pulmonary hypertension - and I have worked with heart transplant folk - it is the strangest thought!

But they don't feel guilty........

The wait is very awful though - knowing you are waiting for a healthy person to die.

I have also had friends who WANTED to donate their daughter's organs - it would have helped them make some meaning of her death. Sadly, she had been anoxic too long - but the transplant co-ordinator doctor came in at 5.00 am to tell them that himself - rather than convey the news as a message, which was a lovely thing to do.

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Deb, the guilt she felt was that she got new lungs in 2 weeks. She got the kungs from a girl who died in an accident at the expense of someone else who was on the list, longer than she was. Just wednesday there was an article in the Globe about a woman in VT who died while waiting.

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Ack! Sad.

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yep.

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Prolix?

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This is terribly sad. Losing someone like this can only be sad.

At times like this, I'm never one to say "she lived a full life, she made the most of her few years, ,,,,," I think we need to allow the sadness its due.

And then we need to hope even harder that medical science can put an end to such diseases yesterday.

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Prolix?

Angie - I feel the same way.

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The loss of an amazing woman

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