In 1969, Fleming's mother left the family following an affair with Paddy McGowan, a local Fianna Fáil senator and businessman.
Despite pressure to place the baby up for adoption from her father and the parish priest, Fleming left the home with her daughter, Corrinna.
The family moved to Derry, and Fleming worked on a scheme teaching industrial sewing to unemployed young people, and then from 1983 as an administrator at Magee College.
While on a holiday in Gran Canaria in September 1987, Fleming experienced dizziness, intense light sensitivity and disorientation.
Three years after her initial diagnosis, her MS attacks worsened, but she hide these as short-term illnesses from her colleagues and friends.
Hiding her condition for as long as possible, she resigned from UCD and took up a position lecturing on women's studies in Arklow as part of a back-to-school programme for adults.
[1] In the knowledge that her health would continue to decline, Fleming contemplated her death, foreseeing it as "prolonged, painful and undignified".
They ruled that her human rights were not affected by the law, and that she could legally participate in her own death by refusing life-saving treatment.
This broadcast received the second highest rating in the show's history at that time, and there was widespread newspaper coverage of Fleming's story.
[1][5][6] In February 2014, her memoir An act of love: one woman's remarkable life story and her fight for the right to die with dignity was published posthumously.
Curran has continued their campaign for legislation on assisted suicide and euthanasia with the organisation Exit International and co-founded Right to Die Ireland.