Husband wrestles with his heartbreak to complete Dr Kate McGarry's memoir

'The Heavens Are All Blue' is a beautiful memoir and love story written by two of Ireland’s most respected doctors.

The late Kate McGarry was an eminent and much loved physician who was consultant in Navan for over 30 years, and was instrumental in developing cardiology services there.

Kate, whose work touched the lives of so many families in the north east was married to consultant surgeon, Finbar Lennon for over 40 years. Dr Lennon spent 30 years of his career in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

When Dr 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 asked Finbar to help her finish the book.

When she sadly passed away on 5th January 2018, Finbar set about finishing their story.

The result is a touchingly beautiful memoir about love, grief and togetherness despite Finbar having no writing experience, and wrestling with his own heartache.

“She kept a lot of diaries, both personal and work diaries and when she was diagnosed she kept a diary of her illness," he says.

“She wanted to tell her own story as a doctor who was now a patient and she continued until she was too ill.

“A couple of weeks before she died she said to me she wsouldnt be able to finish it and asked me to do it.

“I agreed and took it on after she died. I had to go through her diaries and decipher her doctors writing.”

Finbar also tells the story of their lives together. They met at the bicycle shed at UCD where they both pre-med students.

They were going out together on and off for 11 years before they married.

A native of Edenderry, Finbar felt very much a country boy but was delighted when this didn't seem to turn Kate off.

“I was the quiet one. Kate loved socialising and loved parties. We would often go from our home in Collon to Dublin by bus for a party and come home in a taxi.”

They were married 40 years and have four children and have four grandchildren, two of whom Kate had the joy of meeting.

“We had a great personal relationship. We both had a quirky sense of fun that kept us going,” he recalls.

Dr McGarry was President of the Irish Heart Foundation in 2015 and was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians for 32 years. The Royal College of Physicians award a bursary in her name every year to a doctor in training.

She was an honours medical graduate of UCD and won 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.

“The hospital in Navan was her second home. She loved Navan and was very fond of the hospital, all its staff and her patients.

“She would have been very proud of how it coped with Covid-19. It did extemely well in terms of managing it.”

Dr Lennon 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.

If ever a book can be desceribed as a labour of love, 'The Heavens Are All Blue' is certainly one.

The book really encapsulates the life of an Irish doctor coming to terms with a diagnosis but also of a loving marriage between Kate and Finbar.

Published by Hachette Ireland, it is a stunning heart-warming memoir about two doctors, a husband and wife, coming to terms with a devastating diagnosis.