Unique, "In & Out" is a book that unfolds in real time, over the last nine months of an extraordinary woman's life. Colleen McCarthy, who had been living with systemic scleroderma for 22 years, began writing a blog in January 2013, soon after receiving an invitation from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the only place in the country daring to perform high-risk transplants on persons with scleroderma, to participate in a week-long evaluation for a double-lung transplant, her last best hope. Written with unblinking honesty and ready humor, intimacy and grace, the blog developed a passionate following online. Within its pages, now in bound form, appear a whole cast of characters--a large Irish-American family, an impressive network of devoted friends, and two remarkable doctors at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Anyone wanting to know more about the still cunning and baffling disease of scleroderma will find that here as well. The bound book includes a Preface, an Afterward, additional photographs, and other writings and documents that flesh out the author's story.