One day in 1989 Rosemary Breslin got a headache that wouldn't go away. That was the easy part. After months of countless tests, blood transfusions, and treatments, doctors at the very best hospitals around the world knew little except that her strange, life-threatening disease was neither AIDS nor cancer. At the age of thirty-two Rosemary was in dire medical limbo.

Two years after the first symptoms appeared, Rosemary was out of a job, deeply in dept, nervous about health insurance, and facing eviction. Then, on a dreary March night, friends invited her out to dinner and the theater. It was a New York evening she could afford only by using the last of her money, but she pulled on a ratty cashmere sweater and unwittingly went off to meet the man who would change her life, the man she would marry.

In living with her illness and not losing her sanity, and in falling in love, Rosemary has discovered what kind of person she is. Though her medical condition remains serious, her life has become more wondrous than anything she could ever have imagined. Not Exactly What I Had in Mind is Rosemary Breslin's frank account of having a real and marvelous life while wondering how long she might live. It is a true story about the power of love.