Sick Girl

If you're a nurse or into medical non fiction that tells it like it is you'll like this book. It takes you every step of the way as a young woman waits for a heart transplant. It can be difficult to read at times. No one should have to go through everything she did. It's also very informative. I learned a lot about the long journey to a new heart and all the problems involved. There is also a sequel to this book. If you read Sick Girl you'll want to read the Sequel.

Finally someone is brave enough to speak up - not only for heart transplant patients, but for many chronically ill people. In exceptionally beautiful and poignant writing, Amy delves into uncomfortable and unpopular territory. As a few cruel and unfortunate comments here show, there are people who want to believe that there is always a happy answer to terrible illness. Amy shows us, bravely, that this is not so. Some illnesses go on and on, they can come near to breaking us, and yet we can meet their challenge daily, doing the best we can. She is an author and a human being who dares to take the mask off and show us that suffering happens - that therapy and happy thoughts are not always an answer. Sometimes a chronically ill person just has to bear it. And wouldn't it be great if the people around them would have empathy and understanding instead of judgment and that "shut up, you crazy person" mentality. I sure understood a whole lot by the time I got to the end of Sick Girl. I will never look at a sick grandparent, parent or friend the same way. What a read.

This is a powerful, riveting, driving, honestly written, and heart felt (in both senses of the world) book. It spoke to me on a million different levels, kept me involved and reading almost straight through the book, which is a rare thing for me. Part of Amy's story is of the transplant, but part of it is how we (the rest of the world) force her to look and react the way we expect her to, and judge her harsly for trying to telling us the truth of her experience. In the time of memoirs like James Frey's A Million Tiny Pieces, that are revealed to be written for the audience, dishonest and discredited, there are reviews on here that criticize the book and the author for the opposite reason. Because the stripped down truth is too threatening to the critic's own denial system or worse, to serve the author's interest in selling a different book to you. If you are looking for a memoir that is accurate and sharply written, with a compelling and great dramatic story, that is also accurate and piercingly true, then buy this book now.

There are few writers who are lucky enough to have the writing kill and perceptiveness - -as well as the misfortune to have abysmally bad health -- to write a terrific book like "Sick Girl." The book is author Amy Silverstein's true story about her own unexpected heart disease, which put her on death's door and resulted in a heart transplant at age 24. The story is not a feel-good story about miracle medical care that saved a life. It's that, of course, but also the tale about the frustrations and fears of a young woman coming to terms with a body that betrayed her and a class of medical experts that is often wrong, confused and (mostly) human. Her description of the weirdest aspect of living with a new heart -- its disconnection from her central nervous system, severing the brain-heart connection that helps control its beating -- is harrowing and easily the most affecting part of the book. "Sick Girl" is a terrific, brutally honest and compelling book that takes the reader far beyond the somewhat dubious "victory" of organ transplantation, providing a window into the day to day sometimes unbearable challenges that face people who have gained a few extra years, courtesy of modern medicine. It's also a story of extraordinary love and devotion and of trying to wrest joy from a life lived on the precipice between life and death. And the cover -- showing a beautiful Silverstein pulling down her top to expose her transplant scar -- is the most provocative, arresting and descriptive image seen on the cover of a book in a long time.

Like KD, I feel compelled to offer my thoughts on Sick Girl...It's a fabulous book...well written...and Amy Silverstein has given us a refreshingly honest glimpse into what she has been dealing with for so many years as a heart transplant patient. I had a heart transplant almost 3 years ago. Going from a basically healthy life to one complicated by serious medical issues (as so many people know all too well) is not an easy adjustment to make. I did not see the book as negative; it validated all I've been through. It has been hard! The medical community has been fantastic. They just can't give me the realities of and insights into living with someone else's heart and the evil drugs that go along with it that this book does...which is completely understandable because they haven't been the recipient. After reading this book, I don't feel like such an "exception to all the rules." Transplant is NOT the miracle CURE; it is the beginning of a really rough, life-long journey...and there is no going back. I highly recommend this book! I'm buying it for everyone I know and love...and that includes my transplant team. Every transplant patient (as well as all people who have challenges in life) has a different story to tell. I relate well to Amy's story. AND THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE'RE NEGATIVE OR UNGRATEFUL, because I can assure you, there is nothing more humbling in this world than to know you are alive today because someone else lost his/her life and nothing more beautiful than the very selfless act of becoming an organ donor!!!

After reading the negative comments directed toward this book (and Amy) I feel compelled to offer some feedback from my own personal point of view. While it's true that this book isn't a cover-to-cover happy, uplifting tale about a girl whose life goes from "perfect" to shattered to walking miracle, I do feel it is an accurate representation of someone who is being crushed by the weight of their circumstances. I'm sure that Amy is very grateful for the heart that's beating in her chest now but at the same time in order to keep her new heart healthy her body has become a never ending source of torment due to the medications she has to take. I'm not a transplant patient myself so I don't know exactly what she's going through but I do have a pretty good idea how she feels. I have a chronic, life-long disease that has brought me nothing but pain and misery for decades (and there will be decades of suffering to follow). I know what it's like to feel the despair of yet another hospital visit, or being despondent after you've been bounced around from doctor, to doctor, to doctor. Everyone expects people with health issues to be grateful that they're still alive but no one stops to think how difficult day-to-day life can be for us. It takes courage to drop the facade and bring your true feelings to the surface for the entire world to see. I give this book 5 stars because Amy was brutally honest and helped shed some light on the emotional and physical struggles that "sick" people face. Her book helped me realize that I'm not alone in my feelings nor is anyone else that is faced with insurmountable health problems. Bravo Amy. Bravo. Stay strong and keep up the good fight.