Beyond the Cutting Edge

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A journey of grief, grace and healing. On 1st February 2000, Paul Neilly MD FRCS was appointed to be a Consultant General Surgeon with an interest in Colorectal Surgery to Altnagelvin Hospital, Londonderry. He had reached the peak of his career and his dreams had been realised. Furthermore, his family were now very secure, at least, so he thought. Two and a half years later Paul was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the very area of his speciality. during the course of the next two years he and his wife Averil did everything possible to avoid the inevitable, but alas, Paul passed away in February 2004. Before he dided Paul put pen to paper to write a small book, The Cutting Edge.

In it, with typical candour and complete confidence in his Saviour, Jesus Christ, he eloquently expressed how he was facing his imminent mortality. What Paul penned was a legacy of his Christian witness while he and Averil were passing through some very dark days/ In the years since Paul passed away Averil has tried to cope with the challenges of widowhood and being a single parent. These years have brought her through an emotional and at times tortuous kaleidoscpe of tears, grief, resentment, doubt and fear. Over the same passage of time, by the grace of God, she has been able to meet these human and all to common reactions with Christian fortitude. It is not that her tears do not fall any more or that her heart does not still ache for the loss of her much-loved husband. On the contrary, she does have her moments of grief. However, through it all she has learned that the Lord and His grace are sufficient for every situation. Like her husband before her, Averil with Victor Maxwell has now put pen to paper to write Beyond the Cutting Edge. In this compliment to her husband’s earlier book Averil eloquently tells of those dark days of acute grief and how God has helped her and her children.

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