How long has Frank McCourt been gravely ill?
Author of the bestseller Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourt, who is battling the deadly skin cancer melanoma, is gravely ill and may have only weeks to live. The Pulitzer Prize winner, who is due to celebrate his 79th birthday next month, was transferred to a hospice at the weekend. According to the writer’s brother Malachy McCourt, who spoke publicly about his brother’s illness in May, the cancer was then in remission following a course of chemotherapy. Describing his brother as “a hearty fellow” who had survived worse, Mr McCourt, an actor and author, denied several media reports that his brother was on his deathbed. After receiving treatment at the world-famous Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital in New York, the writer was declared well enough to return home to Connecticut. However, a friend said yesterday that Mr McCourt’s condition has deteriorated dramatically since then and that he is seriously ill. It is understood he became unwell while on a cruise in the Pacific and was transferred
Frank McCourt is gravely ill with meningitis and is unlikely to survive, the author’s brother said Thursday. Malachy McCourt said that his 78-year-old brother, best known for the million-selling “Angela’s Ashes,” is in a New York hospice, “his faculties shutting down.” “He is not expected to live,” said McCourt, himself an author and performer. Frank McCourt was recently treated for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, but his brother says he had been doing well until about two weeks ago, when he contracted meningitis. “He was out and about, being active, doing talks and so forth,” Malachy McCourt said. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/16/frank-mccourt-gravely-ill_1_n_235659.html Sources: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/16/frank-mccourt-gravely-ill_1_
