Other Endings

Organ Transplantation and the Burdens of Hope

Weaving together personal memoir with in-depth research, Other Endings explores why organ transplantation is presented in a triumphalist narrative of medical progress and happy endings while stories of the anguish endured by people involved with waitlist deaths remain untold.

In this raw and intimate memoir Anita Slominska recounts her sister Shauna’s eighteen-month wait for a liver transplant that failed to take place in time to save her life. Shauna’s death, at age twenty-nine, defied the usual redemptive promise of a life-saving transplant and forced Slominska to confront difficult questions: Why was she so unprepared for the devastating loss of her sister? Why do so many chronicles of organ transplantation celebrate survival, while few acknowledge failure and loss? Who are the people who die waiting, and why are their stories untold?

Weaving together personal memoir with in-depth research, Other Endings explores the triumphalist narrative of transplantation as medical progress and happy ending. This narrative, Slominska argues, does not capture the complicated, messy, and imperfect reality, nor does it make room for the experiences of hope and anguish involved with waitlist deaths, which are more common than we realize. Incorporating excerpts from Shauna’s online journal as well as reflections on her own role as her sister’s caregiver, Slominska challenges readers to imagine what it is like for patients and families to experience a wait for a transplant that ends in death.

A profound contribution to narrative medicine, Other Endings excavates societal beliefs that shape our expectations of science and medicine, raising critical questions about why and how we tell illness stories. Throughout, Shauna remains central: the indelibly human face of one person who died waiting.

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