`He held his head high until the end. I don't know how or where he got the strength but he kept us all going."

Margaret Hamilton is talking about her husband, Jimmy, who died in April at the age of 39, five weeks after being told he had CJD.

The bitter irony is that he almost certainly got CJD as a result of a treatment that was meant to enhance his life.

In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, as a Dublin teenager, Jimmy was given human growth hormone treatment at St Vincent's Hospital for his unusually short stature. Shortly afterwards, the deaths of a number of people in the US brought to light a tragic fact: a batch of the hormone, made from the pituitary glands of people who had died, had been contaminated with CJD.

Yet it was highly unlikely that any of the 28 people in Ireland who had been administered human growth hormone were infected.

Jimmy Hamilton was unlucky.

Yet, even after he got the diagnosis in March, he said he never regretted taking the treatment. "He had a great life up to the time he got sick and he didn't know what quality of life he'd have had if he hadn't got the treatment," said his brother, Paul. "He thought it was a great thing because he had a great life."

He worked in The Irish Times from the late 1970s - his first job was delivering invoices to advertisers during the long postal strike. He was a sports fanatic, a Liverpool supporter, and would stay up through the night to watch a Grand Prix.

The symptoms began about a year ago: eyesight trouble, a persistent cough, cramps. They came separately and seemed unconnected. Specialist after specialist performed tests. Everything was clear. The doctors came to the conclusion that he was suffering from stress.

Jimmy was a laid-back sort of person and the only stress his family saw was being kept waiting around for hours for tests to be done. They still remember a day he waited from nine in the morning until nine in the evening before being told a particular test wouldn't be done that day.

Still, nobody had an inkling of what lay ahead. A physiotherapist in St Joseph's in Raheny helped him greatly. For a time he seemed to improve. Then his balance worsened. In January, he could no longer negotiate the stairs in The Irish Times, where he worked in the management systems information section.

In February, the last of many tests was done. His consultant and his family were confident it would be clear. They were told they would get the results in six to eight weeks. When they were called back to see their consultant after only three weeks, they suspected nothing.

"We knew it was getting worse, but we didn't think it was at a stage where it would never get better," said Margaret.

"We were making plans in the background to deal with a long-term illness," said her brother-in-law, Con.

Instead, they got what the consultant described as "the worst possible news" for them. Margaret doesn't remember very much of what was said. Con, who happened to be with them, established, after his brother and sister-in-law had left, that Jimmy might have three to six months to live. In the event, he lived for just over five weeks, an unusually short time for a person with CJD. Also unusual was the fact that he retained his mental capacity until the very end.

The family's pain was relieved by Jimmy's attitude and by the help of their GP, Dr Dennis Corboy, nurses from Raheny Health Centre and the staff of St Francis Hospice, who enabled Jimmy to stay at home throughout his illness.

He took the illness bravely, but the family's grief is nevertheless great. He was a devoted father who leaves a two-year-old daughter behind him.

"He was a happy-go-lucky fellow, a brilliant husband," says Margaret. "He was a great dad, an excellent dad. I couldn't fault him."

Jimmy Hamilton's sister-in-law Nicola King is setting up a CJD information website and can be contacted at cjdinfo@ireland.com