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ChaoticMusings -> The Whine Cellar -> Kirsty, 28, the scientist leading fight against antibiotic resistance crisis has fatal cancer
Post Info TOPIC: Kirsty, 28, the scientist leading fight against antibiotic resistance crisis has fatal cancer
Digger


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Kirsty, 28, the scientist leading fight against antibiotic resistance crisis has fatal cancer
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Kirsty Smitten harbours fantasies of one day collecting a Nobel Prize for her scientific work – and rightly so, given that it could save millions of lives and avert a medical catastrophe.

At just 28, she has achieved something that hasn't been done for nearly 40 years: created a new class of antibiotics.

In doing so she is leading the fight against anti-microbial resistance – what the World Health Organisation calls one of the biggest threats to global health – which has seen bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve over time and no longer respond to medicines.

However, in a devastating twist of fate, this exceptional biochemist is now having to face up to the fact she may not be around to receive any accolades. Kirsty has been given just months to live after being diagnosed with heart cancer – a terminal disease so rare it affects only two people a year in the UK.

'How? I mean, really, how has this happened?' asks Kirsty when we meet at the Cornish bolthole where she is spending a week recuperating between rounds of chemotherapy with her fox-red labrador, Bailey.

'I eat healthily. I don't drink much, I don't smoke. And, until my diagnosis, I played sport every day.

'There aren't words to express how sad I feel that I might not be around to see how our potentially Nobel Prize-winning work might unfold. My only hope is that the work carries on without me. I'm sure it will.'

She has so much more to offer the world, but as a scientist – despite understandable moments of 'Why me?' rage – Kirsty is a pragmatist. She knows her cancer was caused by a rare genetic mutation, not her lifestyle. But it is that anger that propels her to pore over research and try to buy whatever additional time she can with the same doggedness that may, eventually, help save the world from anti-microbial resistance.

'Sometimes the anger overwhelms me. I was watching a TV news report about a convicted rapist the other night and got upset, wanting to know why I've been given only months to live when there are people like him committing terrible atrocities in the world.

'It seems so unfair. But, even so, I wouldn't wish this on the worst person in the world.'

Kirsty has cardiac angiosarcoma – a tumour in her heart. If she opted for the surgery needed to remove it, there is a significant risk she would bleed to death. And if she survived the operation, she would, at most, gain only a few more years. This type of tumour will grow back and is likely to spread or burst, causing her heart to fail.

 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11952247/Cancer-stricken-scientist-created-antibiotic-type-40-years-die-Nobel-Prize.html



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 [04-10, 20:41] xtras:i dont think anyone in their right mind would have a crush on stoo

 
Digger


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How very sad. It's as though she's been sent here to do that one thing, then depart job done. Tragic.

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 [04-10, 20:41] xtras:i dont think anyone in their right mind would have a crush on stoo

 
Syl


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To be told you only have a few months to live at any age is unthinkable, to be told when you are only 28, I cant imagine the devasation.

She has done more in her short life than most do treble her age, I doubt that's much consolation though.

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Maddog


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The world sure ain't fair is it?



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Syl


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Maddog wrote:

The world sure ain't fair is it?

 When you are dealt a crap hand like her, how could you think differently?



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Vam

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This brings to mind the saying ‘only the good die young’.

Poor girl! Hopefully, her trailblazing innovative work will continue and she’ll be awarded posthumously.



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Maddog


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Syl wrote:
Maddog wrote:

The world sure ain't fair is it?

 When you are dealt a crap hand like her, how could you think differently?

 I don't even need to be dealt the crap hand to know it's not. 

 

And it's frustrating. I can stop some unfairness in the world by being my warm cuddly self when I see it happen. 😉

 

But heart cancer killing a 28 year old? I'm powerless, as are people trained to deal with it,  and that frustrates me. 



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Syl


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Maddog wrote:
Syl wrote:
Maddog wrote:

The world sure ain't fair is it?

 When you are dealt a crap hand like her, how could you think differently?

 I don't even need to be dealt the crap hand to know it's not. 

 

And it's frustrating. I can stop some unfairness in the world by being my warm cuddly self when I see it happen. 😉

 

But heart cancer killing a 28 year old? I'm powerless, as are people trained to deal with it,  and that frustrates me. 

 Of course it's frustrating, a young person should not have a terminal illness, no one should die before their parents, if life was fair, it would never happen...but life isn't fair.

 

I remember reading an interview Olivia Newton John did...she was asked how she handles her cancer diagnosis, she was still fairly young when she was first diagnosed.

She said, instead of thinking 'Why me', she thought, 'Why not me'. I imagine accepting your fate makes it easier to deal with, and probably makes the life you do have left happier.



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Digger


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Syl wrote:
Maddog wrote:
Syl wrote:
Maddog wrote:

The world sure ain't fair is it?

 When you are dealt a crap hand like her, how could you think differently?

 I don't even need to be dealt the crap hand to know it's not. 

 

And it's frustrating. I can stop some unfairness in the world by being my warm cuddly self when I see it happen. 😉

 

But heart cancer killing a 28 year old? I'm powerless, as are people trained to deal with it,  and that frustrates me. 

 Of course it's frustrating, a young person should not have a terminal illness, no one should die before their parents, if life was fair, it would never happen...but life isn't fair.

 

I remember reading an interview Olivia Newton John did...she was asked how she handles her cancer diagnosis, she was still fairly young when she was first diagnosed.

She said, instead of thinking 'Why me', she thought, 'Why not me'. I imagine accepting your fate makes it easier to deal with, and probably makes the life you do have left happier.

 Olivia Newton John was lovely.  She was a friend of my brother.  He used to live in Oz.   He said she was beautiful inside and out.



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 [04-10, 20:41] xtras:i dont think anyone in their right mind would have a crush on stoo

 
Syl


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Yes, she came across as a lovely woman.

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