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Sick Girl | 
| Author: Amy Silverstein
Publisher: Grove Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $6.10
You Save: $7.90 (56%)
New (38) Used (17) from $5.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  54 reviews
Sales Rank: 284298
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0802143873
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780802143877
Publication Date: October 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The hardcover publication of Sick Girl garnered tremendous attention, generated impressive sales, and ignited controversy. Both inspiring and provocative, reactions to the book ranged from inflammatory posts on a U.S. News & World Report blog, to hundreds of letters from readers, to a full-page review in People. Amy’s force, candor, and her refusal to be the thankful patient from whom we expect undiluted gratitude for the medical treatments that have extended her life, have put her at the center of a debate on patient rights and the omnipotent power of doctors. At twenty-four, Amy was a 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. Amy chronicles her harrowing medical journey from the first misdiagnosis to her astonishing recovery, which is made all the more dramatic by the romantic bedside courtship with her future husband, and her uncompromising desire to become a mother. In her remarkable book she presents a patient’s perspective with shocking honesty that allows the reader to live her nightmare from the inside—an unforgettable experience that is both disturbing and utterly compelling.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 49 more reviews...
 Touching! November 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I learned a lot from this book, and highly recommend it. You will not regret.
 Great book (though she is selfish) November 9, 2008
I really liked the book and found it hard to put down at times. I found myself laughing at times to her humor. But a bit disappointed that she is pretty self-centered. For example: She mentions several times about how badly she wants to get pregnant and have a baby, yet she gives vague details about how her adopted son came about. If she truly cared about someone other than herself, I would think she would at least put some emphasis on her son.
Rollercoaster of a Book October 29, 2008
This book I couldn't put down. It is mesmerizing from beginning to end. Often I was admiring her bold candor. And cringing from it. Sometimes I thought she was a blazing narcissist. And then I'd be inspired by her huge huge courage.
I had no idea a heart transplant was not a magic fix that worked until it was rejected. Omg, it is the very tough life to lead with a heart transplant. I had no idea.
For instance, the heart is not hooked up to the spinal column. The replacement heart was removed, the patient's heart was removed, to never again have a heart that is hooked up to the spinal column. Forever after it does not feel like a normal heart. Forever after it doesn't act like a normal heart. Forever after a transplant patient lives with fear to terror with constant varying symptoms.
Near the end of the book she's summing up about her warm and fuzzy internist doc at the very beginning of her ordeal taught her never again to warm up like a friend to a doctor, because she'd be moved up to one specialist after another.
I remember my horror when my mother, alone in the hospital during my father's lung surgery, received a phone call in the lobby by our many, many years family doctor that there was no hope. No empathy. No hand holding. Not even making sure someone - a nurse, someone, would be with my mother when she received the news.
I remember when my father was in the hospital dying of cancer he'd gotten a stomach infection that required a specialist. I can remember sitting in our dining room calling the specialist sobbing. He hadn't been notified by, I guess, hospital staff. He quickly agreed to come. He was the ONLY doctor I'd experienced the entire time who unhurriedly with empathy and compassion treated my father and then took the time to look at the family pictures. This doctor was there only that one day. He's the only one I've never forgotten.
What a remarkable woman - Amy Silverstein.
 Amy, there are many who wish they had the "bad health" you have October 22, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
First, I am an R.N. who has cared for many truly unfairly ill people with repeated admissions for their illness which eventually led some to their death. One of the most horrifying was a woman I cared for who started with a below the knee amputation in one leg, then each admission had more and more of her body removed until she was left amputated from the waist down like someone you would see in the circus. She had a bag for urine and a bag for stool, suffered tremendous pain and body image violation. Developed an untreatable infection and died a horrendous death.
I am also someone who has suffered with chronic pain illnesses for over 15 years depriving me from a life I so wanted like my friends and unlike Amy, I can not walk any significant distance so jogging daily or going to Spain with my friends is utterly out of the question. I appreciate that Amy is able to write clearly her experience but if she wasn't a heart transplant patient there would really be nothing that would make her situation unique.
Thousands of people suffer illnesses at young ages. They experience lost dreams (like finishing school which Amy achieved) loss of being parents (Amy got that one in, unsupportive spouses (amazingly Amy got that one too) and chronic unrelenting pain needing heavy narcotics or implantable stimulators (I think cycloclosporine would be a walk in the park for them).
What is sad and kinda unacceptable is that despite all Amy went through she recogized that she should be thankful but could never grow up enough to really feel it. I often have wondered at the unfairness it seems that the the people who I feel are so undeserving of illness (I cared for a priest who died a tremedously painful death from liver cancer) and those who are the scum of the earth ( a heroin addict who decided to shoot up through a IV in a major vein in his neck prompty putting himself into cardiac arrest and lived) seem to survive. Hard to know why Amy got her heart, lived to age 24 before a congential defect reared its head, but truly it seems the most deserving of better health are not the ones who get it and the ones who get those second changes don't always deserve it.
Finally someone is brave enough to speak up... October 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Finally someone is brave enough to speak up - not only for heart transplant patients, but for many chronically ill people. In exceptionally beautiful and poignant writing, Amy delves into uncomfortable and unpopular territory. As a few cruel and unfortunate comments here show, there are people who want to believe that there is always a happy answer to terrible illness. Amy shows us, bravely, that this is not so. Some illnesses go on and on, they can come near to breaking us, and yet we can meet their challenge daily, doing the best we can. She is an author and a human being who dares to take the mask off and show us that suffering happens - that therapy and happy thoughts are not always an answer. Sometimes a chronically ill person just has to bear it. And wouldn't it be great if the people around them would have empathy and understanding instead of judgment and that "shut up, you crazy person" mentality. I sure understood a whole lot by the time I got to the end of Sick Girl. I will never look at a sick grandparent, parent or friend the same way. What a read.
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