Gia has earned her wings

David has let us know of Gia's passing on January 19. She had been undergoing very aggressive chemo treatment and contracted a severe infection that caused irreparable organ damage. She passed peacefully from a coma into eternity. As per her wishes, she was cremated yesterday. David will be bringing her ashes to Greenlawn Cemetery in Brooklyn at a future date.

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this ... it's only been a month since she was diagnosed. This is so unfair, so heartbreaking.

I wish I had better news... I will miss her very much.

Karen,

When did Gia join FDMB? I don't remember her, but I visited the board less and less after Oliver passed in 2001. If Gia was the first to feed high protein food instead of the cr*p we were feeding at the time I sadly missed that era. Oliver would have been with us longer.

A sad day for the FD community.

She was already there when I joined in 2003 ... so it was sometime before that. I know that she and Janet were contemporaries (I think she actually preceded Janet and Binky) and this is part of what prompted Janet to develop her infamous food charts.

I don't know if she was "the first" to feed low carb, but she was one of the first, and one of the first to report what it was doing for Quirk's BGs ... which made her one of the first to have her sugarcat go OTJ.

She and Robin were the perfect FDMB bookends - tough, no nonsense, compassionate teachers. A sad day for the FD community indeed.

Ah, no, this is not the news I hoped for and certainly not so soon. My most sincere condolences to David and their wider family. A great loss to the FDMB family.

I can't pin down when Gia and Quirk arrived but it feels as if they have always been there (I'm sure you know what I mean). Certainly must have been the *very* early 2000s. I'm fairly sure she was one of the people who was so kind when we lost Gwennig, in Sept 2011. She would have already been around a good while before that to have got to 'know' Gwennig (with Gwennig not being the sugarcat, I mean).

Sheila x