Poor Little Sick Girl

It has been a while since I read anything (outside of current news) that has completely enraged me. Sick Girl, by Amy Silverstein, has done just that.

She was a healthy 24-year-old when she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. She had a boyfriend that loved her, and was a law student at NYU. It seemed to hit her like a bolt out of the blue. In less than 8 months, she had degenerated so thoroughly that she required a transplant. Sure enough, because she was young and this was so dramatic, she received the heart of a 13-year-old. Anyone else would have been grateful.

From the very beginning, she was admittedly irate with her doctors. Her first cardiologist, before releasing her to another, was told in no uncertain terms that she would ever take prednisone... only because it might cause her to gain weight. She didn't need to know any more about it. She screamed like a banshee and ran down the hall out of her room the first time that a nurse tried to get an IV into her. This behavior from an Ivy League educated 24-year-old?

It took her two months in the hospital to accept that she actually might need a transplant. After all, she wanted HER heart, not someone else's, and even after she had the surgery she complained that her heart was "dead." Yeah, that's the point.

This is where the pity party really begins.

Her boyfriend proposed to her while she was waiting for the heart. Eventually, he married her, and stuck with her through everything. Such a saint I have never seen. She even admits that her behavior was much better when she was around him because she didn't want to upset him. Too bad that she didn't take that hint from him all of the time. Her father organized an enormous wedding for her, complete with handmade dress and 400 guests, and she complained that they all thought that she was well! She had to sneak into the coat closet to take her meds! She had fought for the last two years to ignore her illness as best she could, and then got upset that everyone else was following her lead!

She was supposed to live for only ten years with her new heart, and at the time of publication, had made it for over twenty. Poor, poor sick girl. She finally decided that she was going to stop taking her anti-rejection meds because they were so toxic and so hard on her that her life wasn't worth living. Never mind that her family, husband, and son were completely devoted to her.

Yes, I said son. Perhaps the only non-selfish thing that she did in the entire book was to adopt a boy, rather than giving birth to one.

Ultimately, she learned that the problem was caused by a congenital defect, not neglect from her evil doctors or a virus, as she believed fully. Once she learned that, she was fine with the whole thing! She suddenly turned from a victim that had her life cruelly ripped from her at the age of 24 to a ticking time bomb for her entire young life. It didn't stop her from being a nasty bitch with a death wish, but it made it easier for her to tolerate.

Granted, I have never been that sick. But, I do take a heck of a lot of meds (in fact, for many years I took Imuran, as she does, but in lower doses). And, I do suffer some pretty miserable side effects from them. Immunosupressants are certainly no picnic for anyone, regardless of the dosage. I have also been in tremendous pain, and scared witless, and would have been perfectly fine with dying. But, I've also put on my big-girl panties and moved on with it. Life is good. And, it's a gift. Every day is a gift. Millions of people die because they can't get treatment for diseases like hers, or mine.

The real irony is that she's on the board of directors for UNOS. So, she doesn't want her donated heart, but can help dictate policy for millions of people that do desperately want and deserve organs? That makes me sick.

I thought that it would make me feel better to get this off my chest, but it just makes me angrier. I'm even more angry that I bought the stupid book.