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Sick Girl
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this ebook
This shockingly frank and irreverent memoir of a young woman’s life with a heart transplant “will inspire and choke you up with tears and laughter” (Larry King).
At twenty-four, Amy Silverstein was your typical type-A law student: smart, driven, and highly competitive. With a full course load and a budding romance, it seemed nothing could slow her down. Until her heart began to fail. With a grace and force reminiscent of Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face or Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, Amy chronicles her medical saga from the first misdiagnosis to her astonishing and ongoing recovery. Her memoir is made all the more dramatic by the deliriously romantic bedside courtship with her future husband, and her uncompromising desire to become a mother.
Distrustful of her doctors and insistent in her refusal to be the “grateful heart patient” she is expected to be, Amy presents a patient’s perspective that is truly eye-opening and even controversial. Amy’s shocking honesty and irreverent humor allow the reader to live her nightmare from the inside—an unforgettable experience that is both painfully disturbing and utterly compelling.
At twenty-four, Amy Silverstein was your typical type-A law student: smart, driven, and highly competitive. With a full course load and a budding romance, it seemed nothing could slow her down. Until her heart began to fail. With a grace and force reminiscent of Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face or Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, Amy chronicles her medical saga from the first misdiagnosis to her astonishing and ongoing recovery. Her memoir is made all the more dramatic by the deliriously romantic bedside courtship with her future husband, and her uncompromising desire to become a mother.
Distrustful of her doctors and insistent in her refusal to be the “grateful heart patient” she is expected to be, Amy presents a patient’s perspective that is truly eye-opening and even controversial. Amy’s shocking honesty and irreverent humor allow the reader to live her nightmare from the inside—an unforgettable experience that is both painfully disturbing and utterly compelling.
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Author
Amy Silverstein
Amy Silverstein is the author of Sick Girl, which won a “Books for a Better Life Award” and was a finalist for the Border’s Original Voices Award. She earned her Juris Doctor at New York University School of Law, has served on the Board of the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS), and is an active speaker and writer on women’s health issues and patient advocacy. She lives in New York.
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Reviews for Sick Girl
Rating: 3.5952381428571427 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
42 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"Sick Girl" is an honest look at what it's like to be a very young woman with a very serious, life-threatening illness. This is the story of Amy Silverstein, who discovers at age 24 that she is very sick. Her heart is giving out....quickly. Going from a diagnosis of a "virus in the heart" that will probably only take some medication and rest to recover, to the gut wrenching realization that the problem is much more urgent, and that Amy has suddenly found herself at the top of the heart-transplant list in New York.She waits for two months, going from minute to minute, becoming more and more bedfast as her heart is rapidly deteriorating....Amy is trying to hold it together, enduring test after test, including heart biopsies, angiograms, etc.Finally a heart is found and ready. Amy is whisked into surgery, knowing full well that this could be it for her....either a brand new lease on life or death on the table. The heart works perfectly and Amy begins life as a transplant recipient....only to realize that this is not a cure, but a whole new way of life. She will endure daily medications that will nauseate her, cause her fatigue and make her miserable, having many routine tests, ER visits and hospitalizations....all for the privilege of living with a new heart.Over time, she adjusts to the routine, trying hard to live her life with her new husband (who adores her) and her friends, going on trips and keeping up a brave front, all the while feeling ill almost all the time and struggling beneath her strong facade. Husband Scott and Amy decide that since she has been urged not to become pregnant, to adopt a baby boy. Casey becomes the light of their lives and Amy has found a way to get "out of herself", now having a reason to keep fighting and keep living in spite of all the difficult times.The book takes you with Amy through all the inner turmoil of a young woman with a very rare condition....how well-meaning friends and doctors infuriate her with platitudes and patronizing words, when she wants to it to be understood that this is not a "garden variety" illness....this is a Heart Transplant she is dealing with. Of course, none of them can truly understand what it's like, and this makes Amy feel even more isolated and alone emotionally, even though her wonderful husband is a strong support in her life.Eventually, after outliving her life expectancy by many years, Amy discovers lumps in her lymph nodes and fears the worst.....a common and expected lymphoma caused by the immunosuppressive drugs she must take to keep rejection of her heart at bay. She faces yet another surgery, that turns out to have complications and causes Amy to stop and question whether she has enough endurance left to face yet another obstacle in her young life. She has fought so hard to this point, endured so much....can she possibly go through one more thing?This memoir was highly readable....I could not put it down. Her honesty and realism was refreshing and heartbreaking. I could feel her frustration, her fear, her isolation, her hope. I admired her bravery and her strong spirit in the face of death. This woman is a true hero. I would recommend this book!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5An interesting -- and yet, at times, self-serving -- memoir of living with a heart problem and then a heart transplant.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Written by a courageous woman who is not afraid to complain to her doctors about her heart transplant. I admire her as much as I despair of her attitude.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The writing was good. What a whiner. She was not an easy patient. Her husband was depicted as a saint. All couples fight. I think it would have been a little more realistic to see another side to their relationship.