Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 12:04:01 EST

From: SusanS3733@aol.com

To: SusanS3733@aol.com

Karen Duffy's Book Details Illness

.c The Associated Press 

NEW YORK (AP) - Model-actress Karen Duffy remembers the day that marked the

end of her life as a healthy person.

It was the day after the 1995 Emmys, which she attended as George Clooney's date. She woke up with an intense headache that she mistook for a hangover, Duffy told the AP.

Now she spends at least one day a week in doctors' offices and hospitals for neurological work-ups and MRIs. She's gone through chemotherapy, and she's been bedridden for weeks at a time with sarcoidosis, an incurable, painful and debilitating illness.

The 39-year-old spokesmodel for Revlon describes her experience in ``Model Patient: My Life as an Incurable Wise-Ass.'' She is donating profits from the book to a variety of health care charities including groups funding sarcoidosis, breast-cancer and ovarian-cancer research. Duffy said she wanted to write about her illness in a lighthearted fashion.

``There's a saying that you become what you think about the most. So, I didn't want to be so preoccupied with being a patient that that's all I am,'' she said. ``I wanted to occupy myself with romance, passion, humor; with leading an active life to the best extent that was possible.''

As for her prognosis, Duffy said, ``I've never asked because that's a little more information than I could handle, and whatever it was, I've probably proved them wrong by now.''