Description
Book SynopsisWhile the physical and emotional trials of waiting on transplant lists are featured in popular media, the struggles recipients face years after surgery are not. Voices of Teenage Transplant Survivors introduces illness narratives from an unrecognized patient population: recipients of heart, liver, and kidney transplants. Offering unique narratives by adolescents who use poetry to explore issues surrounding the changing body, independence, identity, and mortality, the book showcases a message of healing and voices of hope amid uncertainty.
Illuminating the physical, psychological, and existential challenges confronted by adolescents for which organ rejection and side effects loom in their future, Sample details the poetry workshops where these adolescents articulated experiences silenced by family, friends, and the culture of medicine. She includes close readings and analyses of their writings, along with writing prompts and references to narrative medicine theory. This powerful book offers something new for medical and health professionals, medical humanities researchers, students, and the public.
Trade Review‘Through her stories of remarkable young transplant survivors, Susan Sample weaves a tapestry that illuminates distinctive, intimate concerns about identity, body image, belonging, hope, survival and mortality. This book is essential reading for adolescents and young adults with chronic or terminal illness—and for their parents and health-care professionals.' -- -Kimberly R. Myers, MA, PhD, Professor of Humanities and Medicine, Penn State College of Medicine, USA
It is increasingly recognized internationally that poetry can play a major supportive role both for patients of all ages as well as for their responsible health professionals. This inspirational book curated by Professor Susan Sample adds to this important message, with its insights through poetry by teenagers into their lives before and after heart, kidney, and liver transplants. This book should interest communities around the world concerned with organ replacement, whether young or older patients or their families, or responsible health professional staff and students. -- Donald RJ Singer MD, FRCP
The subtitle, “Miracle-Like,” well captures the spirit and achievement of Susan Sample’s Voices of Teenage Transplant Survivors. Sample presents poems written by adolescents participating in poetry workshops at the summer Youth Transplant Camp program near Salt Lake City. In a series of short chapters, she carries the reader into the workshop process, introducing many of the young poets and placing their work in context. One young man writes of his anger, “It makes me want to hit / something. That’s better / than someone.” A young woman with a liver transplant proudly affirms, “My scar is my scar. / It has personality. / It bubbles and dances when I laugh.” These poems clearly illustrate the power of poetry to heal and the indominable spirit of youth. Poems of insight, honesty, and wit you won’t forget. -- Jack Coulehan M.D., Emeritus Professor of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine, and Senior Fellow of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University, USA
Dr Sample documents her work at a transplant survivors' summer camp, coaxing poetry from teens who don’t read it, but who have plenty to say about their 'miracle-like' experiences post-transplant. She describes brave young people whose aching drive toward supervivere, (above +to live) bursts forth in striking poetic images and metaphors that blend the surreal with the mundane. The chapter 'Our Scars, Our Selves' unpacks an atypical adolescent identity formation in simple terms. JD writes of dying and returning to life three times, concluding that 'My time is now, and I am here.' We can learn much about resilience from these teen-aged poets. -- Johanna Rian, PhD, Program Director, Dolores Jean Lavins Center for Humanities in Medicine, Mayo Clinic
Table of ContentsChapter 1. Hello, My Name Is;
Chapter 2. Illness and the Ways It Names Us
Chapter 3. Miracle-like
Chapter 4. Teens Just Want to Have Fun;
Chapter 5. The Drive for Independence;
Chapter 6. On the Edge
Chapter 7. Marcus
Chapter 8. Echoes
Chapter 9. Biopsies: Not Benign Procedures ;
Chapter 10. The Truth about Metaphors ;
Chapter 11. Yeah Right, Poetry ;
Chapter 12. Celebration;
Chapter 13. For Those Who Help Us Survive ;
Chapter 14. Waiting Room;
Chapter 15. Utterly Alone;
Chapter 16. Lost and Found;
Chapter 17. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall;
Chapter 18. Reflection;
Chapter 19. Boys and Their Bodies;
Chapter 20. Our Scars, Our Selves ;
Chapter 21. Mark This Beautiful ;
Chapter 22. The Transplant Dream
Chapter 23. Nightmares ;
