The Heavens Are All Blue: A memoir of two doctors, a marriage and a life of love before loss

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When Dr Kate McGarry was diagnosed with an advanced cancer of unknown origin she resolved to write a book to chart her experience: as a woman coming to terms with such devastating news and what this meant to her as a wife and a mother but also, crucially, how she experienced cancer and its treatment as a doctor, who had become a patient.

As Kate adjusted to living with cancer and underwent treatment, she enlisted the help of her husband, fellow doctor, Finbar to help her write the book but then she sadly passed away on the 5 January 2018. With no writing experience, and wrestling with his own heartache, Finbar set about finishing their story. The result is a touchingly beautiful memoir about love, grief and togetherness.

'A loving memoir of time spent both together and apart ... [Kate's] personal legacy, as a mother, a wife and the life and soul of the party, is recorded beautifully in this moving memoir' Sunday Business Post

Author Bio

Dr Finbar Lennon (Author)

Dr Finbar Lennon is a medical graduate of UCD. He trained in Dublin, London and Edmonton. He was appointed a consultant general surgeon in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda in 1982. Since his retirement in 2012 he teaches undergraduate medical students in the Mater Hospital in Dublin. He was recently appointed an Associate Professor in Clinical Surgery in UCD.

Dr Kathleen McGarry (Author)

Dr Kate McGarry was an honours medical graduate of UCD after winning an entrance scholarship to UCD, going on to win the Bellingham Gold Medal in clinical medicine in St. Vincent's Hospital, where she did her early postgraduate training. Her later training took place in the Hammersmith and Great Ormond Street hospitals in London, and the clinical pharmacology department in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She was appointed a Clinical Fellow in University Hospital, Edmonton in Canada before returning to Ireland in 1983 to work as a consultant physician in Our Lady's Hospital, Navan where she was instrumental in developing Cardiology services. Kate was a Fellow on the Royal College of Physicians for twenty-five years and she was also President of the Irish Heart Foundation. In October 2019, The Royal College of Physicians in Ireland honoured Kate with a prestigious new award, the Dr Kate McGarry Prize, which will be awarded annually to doctors in training.