First Wives Club author dead--Anesthesia related death?

CNN's website had the following news release about Olivia Goldsmith who died apparently due to complications from anesthesia (she was undergoing plastic surgery). There are few details.

It just drove home the reality of having someone's life in your hands during even routine operations (if any operation can be called routine!). Reading about this very unfortunate outcome made me realize what an incredible responsibility it must be to be a CRNA--and it is not something to undertake lightly. I can only imagine that something unexpected must have happened in this particular situation.




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'First Wives Club' author dies at 54

NEW YORK (AP) --Olivia Goldsmith, a best-selling novelist whose book "First Wives Club" was made into a movie starring Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton, has died. She was 54.


Goldsmith had been in a coma since last Wednesday after complications resulting from anesthesia during plastic surgery, according to her lawyer, Steven Mintz. She died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on Thursday, he said.

Goldsmith was a management consultant who became one of the first women to be a partner at the firm Booz Allen Hamilton before she began writing her distinctive edgy, humorous fiction.

Her debut novel, in 1992, was "First Wives Club," the tale of three women whose husbands leave them for younger partners. The movie of the same name came out in 1996.

Among her other novels were "The Bestseller," "Flavor of the Month," "Young Wives," and "Switcheroo."

"She wrote these wonderful, celebratory satires, which seamlessly wove her moral convictions and instruction into these popular entertainments," her literary agent, Nicholas Ellison, told The New York Times for its Friday editions.

She was born Randy Goldfield in New York City. She changed her legal name to Justine Rendal and wrote under the pen name of Olivia Goldsmith. She grew up in Dumont, New Jersey, and attended New York University.

She is survived by her mother, and two sisters, Kate Goldfield and Barbara Turner.



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