Harrowing story of medical negligence exposed in book dedicated to a woman's will to live

A work of tribute and of warning to all medical patients has been published by a former resident of Grange Park

"The Woman Who Wouldn't Die" tells the story of Christine Lucey's six year struggle against cervical cancer and her untimely death at 40, the result of medical negligence. In a harrowing saga her husband Don describes the intense suffering involving ten major operations that dramatically diminished the quality of Christine's life, ended her promising nursing career, left her marriage in all but ruins and finally, deprived her seven year old daughter Rebecca of her mother

She did not have to die like that. Following a tip off from one of Christine's nursing colleagues that one of her filed smear test results seemed abnormal, Chris and Don began to investigate and to build a negligence case. Christine did not live to see the outcome, but she died aware of misreported tests, of misdiagnosis, of medical procrastination and surgical bungling.

Summing up the case at the High Court in March 1998, Mr Justice Alliott said, "I have read the papers in this case and as a hard bitten judge of many years experience I could not fail to be moved by the suffering of Mrs Lucey

Don re-lives the horror of those years, piecing together the tragic sequence of events, grappling with incomprehensible medical jargon, to understand the tragedy that had befallen his family and to issue a warning, to protect other women from having to face what Christine went through

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die" is available in good bookshops or from UCT publications, tel. 01793 855575. Don Lucey can be contacted on 01793 851407, mail: donlucey1180@aol.com

www.thewomanwhowouldntdie.com