[1] She lived and worked in Liverpool for her whole life, and was a consultant surgeon at Alder Hey Children's Hospital.
At university, she was inspired by her friends who had previously served in the Royal Air Force to learn to fly, and gained her pilot's licence in 1948.
[2] Irving held house posts at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary, before becoming a senior house officer at Alder Hey Children's Hospital, where she worked with Peter Paul Rickham and Isabella Forshall, two of the founders of paediatric surgery.
[2] In 1960 she married Louis Desmet, a former Belgian oyster farmer who later ran a hotel in Liverpool, and they had three children shortly afterwards.
[2] Desmet's approach was admired by patients, nurses and junior doctors; she was described by one of her registrars as "an iron fist in a velvet glove".