Christopher Reeve’s widow Dana has lost her battle with lung cancer.
I feel so bad for their son Will.
It’s horrible. That family has been through so much. She was so young.
Poor Will. 
Annie, your link states 44, not 47, as her age.
The last interview I saw with her was a few months ago and she said she was doing well and was singing again. Of course they never admit to being terminal.
I feel so bad for their son.
I admired her so much for the way she cared for Christopher after his accident. If I believed in such things I’d say that these were 2 people who were just supposed to be together. If not in life, then in death. So sad.
:smack: This is me, trying to give up coffee yet again. Sorry about that.
To lift a post from the Talking Broadway All That Chat forum:
I was struck by an image, from the end of Chris Reeves’ fabled fantasy film, SOMEWHERE IN TIME, where Reeve, as a playwrite, is reunited, after life, with his beloved–
In an enchanted miasma, somewhere between here and when.
And I couldn’t help but think that today, the Reeves, although only apart for a short while, were able to embrace, for the first time in years.
Anytime the notion starts to enter my head that there’s such a thing as Karma or that life is in any way fair, something like this completely dispells it.
That family sure seems to have had a disproportionately rough time of it.
Her decline was rather quick. Wasn’t she just diagnosed at the end of last year?
Terrible stuff!
Of all the rotten luck… and she wasn’t even a smoker.
Things like this make me wish there’s an afterlife.
How sad and horrible for her son. Losing a parent even as an adult can be quite difficult to cope with…I can’t imagine losing both when still just a child.
It must be very shocking to be diagnosed with lung cancer when you’re not a smoker. I wonder if she was around a lot of secondhand smoke. This is a sad reminder that smoking can hurt more people than just the smoker.
So very sad. My husband lost both of his parents within 2 years of each other. My husband is convinced that the stress of his father’s death contributed to his mother getting cancer. Stress will do crappy things to a body.
I hope that their child has a wonderful support network to take care of Will.
So you ponder a possibility, then take it as a fact, and end up with cautionary platitude. Sheesh.
NPR reports that 2% of lung cancer cases are non-smokers.
She was on Oprah last year, or maybe the year before. She was incredible. Strong, sweet, smart, and genuine. I know the world is full of strong, sweet, smart, and genuine women, but it’s not often that we see them on TV talk shows.
A co-worker made the nastiest comment today (but I don’t feel like pitting it). I read this headline and said “Oh, their poor kid… he’s an orphan already”. Her response (and this is a professional) “Hmmph… rich orphan you mean.” :mad:
RIP, Dana & Chris. I too hope that I’m wrong and somewhere they’re running through a field together.
There are studies that show that people who have served as caretakers to family members for a long term themselves die much earlier than would otherwise be expected. From various things…it’s just like the physical work and emotional stress weaken their own systems somehow.
AP, in their story on Dana Reeve, says 1 in 5 women who get lung cancer never smoked. 20% seems a lot more likely than 2%.
I don’t doubt that secondhand smoke contributes to lung cancer, I just thought lavenderviolet was jumping to conclusions. Still think that.
Dana Reeve was born on March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day), 1961, and so was 45 when she died.
Um, no, she was still 44.
I just know the irreverent wiseacres at The Onion will do a number on this story. Maybe a short squib along the lines of “God compassionately reunites Dana and Christopher Reeve,” or perhaps an interview with God, who tries to explain how He decides these things. (A reductio ab adsurdum piece if there ever was one.)
I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was saying that she must have been exposed to secondhand smoke. I have no idea what the situation was for her specifically. I just felt that since we were on the subject of non-smokers getting lung cancer, it was a good time to point out that many cases of non-smokers getting lung cancer can be attributed to secondhand smoke exposure. I could see some smokers looking at this death and rationalizing “What’s the point of stopping smoking if you might get it even if you never smoke?” or something along those lines and I guess I was trying to preemptively address that. shrug Sorry if that seemed like jumping to conclusions.
Not sure how to reconcile the different figures. Maybe it’s 20% non-smoking women and the 2% is the total non-smoking lung cancer victims (both men and women)?