Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #464227 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

Synopsis
An autobiographical account of living with a faulty heart - and the author's decision to undergo a heart and lung transplant.

Customer Reviews

Inspiring
I found this incredible account of one person's bravery in the face of appalling health problems both heart-rending and awe-inspiring. There are so many 'moments' in the book where I stopped reading, laid it aside, and thought about what I had just read. Sometimes at the sheer technological wonder of the operation involved; sometimes at the author's struggle with the moral issues she had to confront, and sometimes at the poignancy of certain tiny observations - for example after the operation when, with blood pumping round her body properly for the first time in her life, her toes looked unfamiliar to her; pink rather than blue. As compelling as any novel, Will I Still Be Me? is a truly inspiring insight into the life of a courageous and feisty woman.

Struggle and courage
This book perfectly captures the mental and physical struggle of being born with poor health and the struggle that daily life becomes when trying to just live and be normal. Diana's achievement in the book stands out in her ability to express the emotional and psychological aspects of such a life with incredible insight gleaned not just from personal experience but also from her work as a psychologist. Having undergone a heart transplant in June of this year I was desperate to read her account of her journey. Her story mirrors mine incredibly closely and it is comforting to know that the feelings that go with illness and transplant are in a sense normal. The book is the perfect gift for friends and family trying to understand the enormity of the process and what it is like to go through it. It is often difficult to express at a time when a sense of loneliness is overwhelming - how can anyone understand unless they have lived it? Quite apart from all that the book is an inspiring read of a very courageous woman and should be read even by those with no personal interest in transplantation for the simple reason that it should make most people feel very grateful for the healthy lives they have and often take for granted. Keep a box of tissues handy...

Synopsis of the book
Four years ago, Diana Sanders could hardly walk across a room She faced a choice - die young, or go through life-threatening surgery for an uncertain recovery and a future full of medication. Born with a condition which meant her heart never pumped enough oxygen around her body, Diana chose to take the chance.

Will I still be me? A journey through a transplant is Diana's book about her bid for survival. She traces the process of a heart-lung transplant with humour and honesty - the agonising wait for a suitable donor, the midnight rush to Papworth Hospital, surviving the nine hour operation and the intricate route to recovery.

The book charts the despair that can follow a major operation, as well as the kind of thinking and help from others that can fuel the will to live. The medication alone is daunting; side effects at times feel worse than the original condition, and living with new organs brings different challenges:

"I have this huge part of someone else inside me," she writes, "and for a long time I didn't feel I was me anymore".

As well as being a real human-interest story, the book argues strongly for organ donation. Like Diana, many people's lives are saved, or vastly improved, by transplants. However, these are the lucky few. In the UK each year more than 7,000 people wait for a transplant, of whom only 2,500 are successful. The book describes the issues of organ donation, aiming to dispel some of the myths and encourage more people to register as donors.

Today, Diana is back at work as a psychologist in the NHS, and able to walk for miles, travel and live a normal life. "Even being able to walk down the road to post a letter is a miracle".

".. a gripping, lucid account of a roller-coaster of events and emotions .. this book should be an essential read.." Professor John Wallwork, Papworth Hospital.

"Diana Sanders has given us one of the very few accounts of major surgery written from the patient's point of view.... a human-interest story of great poignancy. Excellent." Brian Thompson, author of Keeping Mum