DR. THOMAS QUINCY GARVEY IV

GARVEY, Dr. Thomas "Tom" Quincy IV Of Lexington, MA, died June 9, 2020, of complications from cancer. He was the beloved husband of Kathleen M. Gillespie, beloved son of Dr. Thomas Q. Garvey, III and Dr. Carol (Wilson) Garvey of Potomac, MD, and loving father of Benjamin Gillespie Garvey of Lexington.

Tom was a kind, creative, humorous, and gregarious person who had many friends from the different places and times in his life. He loved practicing primary care medicine and developed close bonds with many of his patients. Tom loved singing and playing the guitar - he didn't need to be asked twice to sing. He composed several clever songs of his own and had a broad repertoire of songs by others.

When undergoing surgery in 2004, Tom began writing a humorous series of e-mails, which he later converted into a blog, about his medical experiences, both good and bad, using witty pseudonyms for his various physicians: tumoriffic.blogspot.com The blog was dormant for several years, except for occasional frightening interpretations of his annual CT scans, but it gained a large audience during his final year, including many readers who had never met him. His blog postings are being assembled for eventual publication.

In the last few years of his life, Tom became an avid nature photographer. He posted many of his photos on Facebook accompanied by clever anthropomorphic captions.

Tom's first brush with cancer was as an eleven year-old child, when, diagnosed with a cancer in his nasopharynx, he began a grueling two years of chemotherapy, several surgeries, and high dose radiation, missing sixth grade but keeping up with his class through home schooling. Then during his medical residency, he developed two surgically cured cancers and a third particularly dangerous one - all in the field in which he had received radiation as a child. In 2005, he again underwent surgery, chemotherapy, and high dose radiation. His fifth and final cancer was diagnosed in May of 2019, in the radiation field of his first and fourth cancers. This cancer could not be removed surgically and did not respond to treatment.

Tom grew up in Potomac, MD. He graduated from the St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. in 1988 and Harvard College in 1992. After working for several years as a technician in the laboratory of Dr. Fred Li at the Dana Farber Cancer Center, he entered Georgetown University School of Law, graduated in 1998, and was admitted to the Maryland Bar. He then entered the New York University School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 2002 and did his residency training in Internal Medicine at the Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, MA.

Tom married immigration lawyer Kathleen M. Gillespie in 2002 and gained not only an adored partner but also an efficient manager of his many medical appointments. He was thrilled by the birth of their son Ben, whom he later dubbed "the Professor," because of Ben's ability to expound knowledgeably and engagingly on any topic of interest to him. Other important members of Tom's family included his beloved dog Ginny, who died too young of cancer, her successor Willow, and their cat Katie.

Tom Garvey practiced primary care medicine at Lahey Health Primary Care in Billerica, MA, and was an active volunteer for the Massachusetts Advisory Committee to Eliminate Tuberculosis, which he co-chaired for a number of years. He also served on the Massachusetts Medical Society's Committee on Environmental and Occupational Health.

Donations in his memory may be made to Partners in Health www.pih.org Boston Healthcare for the Homeless www.bhchp.org Doctors Without Borders www.doctorswithoutborders.org or the Cambridge Health Alliance Foundation www.challiance.org/about/cha-foundation-test A Memorial Service will be held at a later date. Lexington 781-862-1800

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