Customer Reviews

A Gift of Life: A Page From the Life of a Living Organ Donor

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As I write this review, I am preparing to share the author's experience: I am donating a kidney to a friend who has suffered kidney failure. So much of what Ms Chabot-Long experienced I am now experiencing. The decision to give up a kidney is a very emotional one and I can relate to much of what the author went through. I discovered that she had the same experience that I am going through in that it reached the point where she would have been disappointed if for any reason, she could not have done it. I wanted a good, vivid account of what awaits me in the future and Ms Chabot-Long provides such an account. I feel that I have been clued in as to what awaits me both physically and emotionally. I know that the recovery from the surgery is likely to be painful and I have been given a good firsthand account of what I can expect. I was charmed and moved by her description of her family and what they went through in supporting her. The support I have been receiving has made me very emotional. The author is not a professional writer and it is clear that she did not have a professional editor. She and her husband published the book themselves so the writing style is not necessarily smooth and contains grammatical errors. However, I can easily overlook that since the book hits home as to my personal needs. Furthermore, the author did a fair amount of research and provides technical information in a style understandable to lay people. I recommend this book to anyone who wants good. reliable information on what a kidney donor goes through.

As a librarian and a fairly sophisticated user of information, I was indeed pleased to locate this title. My brother had just started dialysis and our family was looking into the pros and cons of living versus cadaver donation. A first-person account of the transplant experience from the point of view of the donor and the recipient was just the sort of introductory material my brother and I were looking for.

Unfortunately, what useful information one could locate on end-stage renal disease, dialysis, the transplantation decision, the surgery or its aftermath was buried under pages and pages of irrelevant detail about the author's family, or was mired in hopelessly inelegant prose, full of glaring errors of grammar and tense. The excerpt of the book that follows the editorial reviews of this title is a perfect example of why clear and concise writing and careful editing are so important.

Given the subtitle "a page from the life of a living donor" one would certainly expect a certain level of personal detail to accompany the facts. Yet Ms. Chabot-Long's account reads like the breathless entries in a teenager's " dear diary." And do we really need to know (over several pages) why it took so long for her to be discharged from the hospital? Hint: this essential bodily function often slows down after surgery. You really don't want to go there.

This account would have been much better if it had been presented as an article in a magazine. It would have forced the author or her editor to stress facts and to highlight the decision-making process that her family used when they faced this crisis.

My brother and I skimmed the book in about an hour and were much better served by the articles I found in reference books, in periodicals, and on the web.