Jeff Healey - Illness and Death

Illness and Death

On January 11, 2007, Healey underwent surgery to remove metastatic tissue from both lungs. In the previous eighteen months, he had two sarcomas removed from his legs.

On March 2, 2008, Healey died of cancer at St. Joseph's Health Centre in his home town of Toronto. He was 41 years old. His death came a month before the release of Mess of Blues, which was his first rock/blues album in eight years.

Healey is survived by his wife, Cristie, and two children. A tribute concert was held on May 3, 2008, to benefit Daisy's Eye Cancer Fund, which, according to Cristie Healey, had helped make major strides in research and future advances for people born with the same genetically inherited retinoblastoma which led to her husband's blindness at eleven months of age. Cristie and Jeff Healey's son was also born with the same disability.

In 2009, Healey was inducted into the Terry Fox Hall of Fame.

In October of 2012, Jeff's family launched the 'all-new' official Jeff Healey website at jeffhealey.com

Read more about this topic:  Jeff Healey

Famous quotes containing the words illness and/or death:

    “The fact that illness is associated with the poor—who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one’s midst—reinforces the association of illness with the foreign: with an exotic, often primitive place.”
    —Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    “Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, “Go to sleep by yourselves.” And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.”
    —Margaret Mead (1901–1978)