| Lucy Grealy |
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| 1963 births | |
| 2002 deaths | |
| people from dublin | |
| irish-american writers | |
| american essayists | |
| american memoirists | |
| autobiographers | |
| deaths by heroin overdose in the united states | |
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She was born in 1963 in Dublin , and her family moved to the United States several years later. She was diagnosed at the age of 9 with a rare form of cancer called Ewing's Sarcoma . Treatment for this terrible and often fatal cancer (Grealy reports an estimated 5% survival rate) left her disfigured, and over the following years she had many facial reconstructive surgeries. The book describes how she weathered the cruelty of schoolmates and others, suffering taunts and endless stares from strangers. At 18, Lucy entered Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. Here she made her first real friends and found a love of poetry. She graduated in 1985 and went on to study at the Iowa Writers' Workshop . In Iowa , she lived with fellow writer Ann Patchett , whose best-selling novel '' Bel Canto '' won the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award. Ann and Lucy's friendship grew out of their literary ambition and passion for writing, and it is the poignant subject of Patchett's recent memoir, ''Truth and Beauty'' (2004). Following her final reconstructive surgery, Lucy became dependent upon her prescribed painkiller, OxyContin , as she had earlier in life with Codeine . This dependency in turn introduced her to heroin. She grappled with this addictions privately for the last few years of her life. Towards the end of her life, Lucy struggled with bouts of depression and drug abuse. She died of a presumed accidental drug overdose on December 18, 2002 , in New York , at the age of 39. |
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