As a talented medical illustrator, Donna Corinne Needleman Young returned home one day filled with vivid descriptions of a dramatic surgery that was the subject of one of her illustrations.

During dinner, she told her family about the operation, the blood, the gory details and how the small intestine really wasn't small.

This caused a problem: That evening her family was dining on lasagna -- red sauce over noodles that suddenly wasn't so appetizing.

"I'm proud of you," her brother, Gary Needleman of Baltimore, told her, "but can you hold off on the details?"

He was proud because she'd also announced that night that she was ending her career as an illustrator to pursue a medical degree. And, indeed, Dr. Young eventually became a successful internist at West Penn Hospital until cancer prompted her retirement four years ago.

Dr. Young, 48, of North Strabane, died Thursday from breast cancer that her husband, William G. Young, said had metastasized to her bones, then her lymph nodes.

But she had continued practicing medicine, of sorts, until her final moments.

"As she was lying in the hospital bed two weeks before she died, patients were coming in to see her, and she was asking them if they were still taking their medications and how their husband was doing." Mr. Needleman said.

She even told a friend to seek medical treatment for a troublesome mole on her arm.

Artist, former beauty pageant contestant, mother of two and a doctor with a long list of credentials -- Dr. Young packed a lifetime in her cancer-shortened existence.

"She was too young and too talented to go so soon," Mr. Young said.

After graduating from Woodlawn Senior High School in Baltimore in 1978, Dr. Young entered the Miss Baltimore USA pageant but did not win. Instead, she completed a four-year degree at the Maryland Institute of Art in 2¹/₂ years and launched a successful career as a medical illustrator.

Turning to medicine, she graduated from the New York Medical College in 1989. She completed her residency in internal medicine at Yale Primary Care Internal Medicine, then at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1992.

Dr. Young became medical director of West Penn's residency program and an attending physician who oversaw the work of medical residents. She also was a partner at Washington Internal Medicine and Cardiology and director of occupational medicine at St. Clair Hospital.

After retiring, she continued doing some artwork, including producing a drawing used as a yearbook cover for the North Strabane Intermediate School in the Canon-McMillan School District.

"She was very caring," Mr. Young said. "She was not fast, was always late, and always took her time doing things, but she always looked immaculate when she left the house.

"If she had something to do, she would spend all night doing it," he said. "She was very good under pressure to come up with great things."

Michele Collins, a lifelong friend, said she will focus on Dr. Young's deep faith in her eulogy during funeral services.

"She really reached out to people in need," Ms. Collins said. "Cancer is an ugly disease, but it brought out the beauty in Donna -- the beauty of her spirit."

Besides her husband and brother, Dr. Young is survived by daughter, Darcy Nicole, 12, and son Grayson William, 10.

Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. today in the Upper St. Clair Alliance Church, with burial in Woodruff Memorial Park.