Reviews

I recently read a new book that’s causing a ruckus in the transplant community. Sick Girl is by Amy Silverstein, a heart transplant recipient who has survived nineteen years with her new organ. Because it’s getting a big publicity push, this could become the best-selling transplant medical memoir ever.

Sick Girl is better written than most medical memoirs. (By “medical memoirs” I mean autobiographical books that focus on the author’s fight with this or that illness.) I have read many books in this genre over the years, most about CF or transplants or both. Most are self-published, which usually means the quality of the writing and editing is not as good as you get from mainstream publishers. And most of these medical memoirs tend to be a little too Hallmark movie and “very special episode of Blossom” for my taste. Understandably, these books generally exude gratitude and the thrill of living. The downside: too saccharine, too “Live life to the utmost every day!!!” — and yes, too many exclamation points. (I say all this as someone who plans on self-publishing my own medical memoir overflowing with exclamation points.) So in this respect, Sick Girl is a welcome deviation. But she goes way too far in the other direction. Silverstein is a glass-half-empty person and it shows.

Sick Girl is billed as the “true story” of a transplant patient’s life, the true story of the hardships a transplant patient faces. Because it’s such a popular book, I’m afraid people will believe it is the true story. Really, it’s her story. And her story is very different from the stories of most transplant patients I have known. The tests, the doctors, the caregivers — much of that is the same. But her attitude is different and attitude is everything. She has such a crappy attitude I’m amazed she has survived for so long. This is a how-not-to book, how not to be a transplant patient.

I cut her some slack for a few reasons. First, she was a healthy 24-year-old woman when she was suddenly afflicted with heart disease. In a matter of months, she went from an apparently healthy person to a transplant patient. I imagine that was difficult. I had my whole life to train as a sick person. Still, she has had nineteen years as a transplant patient. She should be well-trained now. Second, the main immunosuppressant medication she takes twice a day makes her nauseous (for how long is unclear). Mine make me feel sort of “blah” but I don’t have to deal with nausea twice a day. Why have her doctors never changed up her medicine? Third, she and her doctors do a terrible job of communicating. Fourth, she somehow got latched on to the idea that her transplant heart would give her ten years. The doctor should have told her: nobody knows. Fifth, I feel sorry for her because I think she lacks mental toughness.

That being said, I cannot stand this woman. She is intensely self-absorbed and completely lacking in perspective. She screams and runs down the hall at the thought of getting an IV yet she considers herself courageous. She describes every test she undergoes as an ordeal so it’s impossible to tell how bad the tests really are. She calls herself beautiful and smart and brave (she suffers no shortages on the ego front). She goes on a whirlwind tour of Spain with several other “fabulous couples” (her phrase) and expects us to feel sorry for her because she gets tired and has to take a half day off. She does not buy into the whole “I’m a grateful transplant recipient” gig because she is too smart, she says, to fall for it. GET OVER YOURSELF WOMAN!

She was fortunate enough to get a new heart — the heart of a thirteen-year-old girl. This new heart has allowed Silverstein to live another nineteen years (NINETEEN YEARS!) and do what that girl never could. After her transplant, Silverstein graduated from law school, got married in a high society New York wedding, married a guy who is obviously (mysteriously, I would say) madly in love with her and incredibly supportive of her, and adopted a child. Yet she whined and griped every step of the way. She is also able to jog four miles at a time and take amazing annual trips to exotic locales. Yet when we first meet her she is contemplating committing suicide while her husband and child are away at the Super Bowl. This selfishness is typical of her behavior. She is a spoiled brat, a diva, and a drama queen all wrapped up in one. I feel sorry for her husband, her kid and her doctors.

At one point, her husband says, on page 260, “You couldn’t possibly feel that bad. It’s like you’re the only person who has ever felt sick. You always make it sound like it’s the worst illness that there ever was in the world.” To which I exclaimed, AMEN BROTHER! He voiced what I’d been thinking for the previous 259 pages. But her response is that he just can’t understand, nobody can understand — because apparently she is the first person in the history of the humanity to suffer. She claims to be grateful for her transplant but by my estimation, she is grateful 5% of the time and a weepy jerkoff the other 95% of the time. Her afterword is titled “In Gratitude.” I thought, okay, finally, at least here she will talk about her donor and donor family. Nope. It’s all about thanking people for encouraging her to write this crappy book.