When Death Becomes Life Quotes

“The sick suffer alone, they undergo procedures and surgeries alone, and in the end, they die alone. Transplant is different. Transplant is all about having someone else join you in your illness. It may be in the form of an organ from a recently deceased donor, a selfless gift given by someone has never met you, or a kidney or liver from a relative, friend or acquaintance. In every case, someone is saying, in effect, “Let me join you in the recovery, your suffering, your fear of the unknown, your desire to become healthy, to get your life back. Let me bear some of your risk with you.”
― Joshua Mezrich, How Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“the dumbest kidney is smarter than the smartest doctor.”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“When we put a new liver in her, this simply reset the clock. It didn’t do anything to treat her disease. In some ways, this is a microcosm of how our whole health care system works. We celebrate, and pay for, the big, sexy interventions—the operation, the cardiac catheterization, the heroic treatment that is technically challenging and potentially risky. But what really matters, and yet what our health care system doesn’t prioritize, is the day-to-day caring for chronic disease, the incremental, preventative care that can avert transplant altogether. Alcoholism is never actually cured. It can be managed, it can go into remission, but it is always there.”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“Po powrocie do Oxfordu Medawar skupił się całkowicie na sprawdzeniu hipotezy, że odrzucanie przeszczepu allogenicznego jest zjawiskiem immunologicznym.”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“Cardiac surgery, to me, is very black and white. If you do a good job, the patients do fine. If you don’t, they die.”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“It is truly a miserable process. In addition to being confined to a chair for four hours three times a week, many patients feel lousy during and after the sessions, with symptoms that include fatigue, coldness, headache, and muscle cramps. After dialysis, patients will often spend the rest of that day lying in bed. As many patients have described it to me, dialysis keeps you alive but is no way to live. But then again, what’s the alternative?”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“Something about dialysis units always reminds me of the film The Matrix—not the part where Neo is able to dodge bullets while moving in slow motion, but the part where people are plugged into the matrix through sockets at the back of their necks. That is more or less how dialysis works, and it seems totally barbaric.”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“Again, everything needs to be perfect. It doesn’t matter how tired or distracted you are, how many things might be going on with other patients or with your boss or your lab or in your personal life. It needs to be perfect. Otherwise, the patient will pay a huge price, the donor won’t have given the gift of life, and you will be woken in the middle of the night by a shrill pager letting you know you’ve screwed up, it is your fault, and now you have to deal with it. That’s a kidney transplant. No big deal, but one of the best things we do in health care.”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“This is why I love the field of transplant. Since I began taking care of sick people, I have noticed that one of the hardest things about getting sick, really sick, is that you are separated from the people you love. Even when families are dedicated to the patient, illness separates the well from the sick. The sick suffer alone, they undergo procedures and surgeries alone, and in the end, they die alone. Transplant is different. Transplant is all about having someone else join you in your illness. It may be in the form of an organ from a recently deceased donor, a selfless gift given by someone who has never met you, or a kidney or liver from a relative, friend, or acquaintance. In every case, someone is saying, in effect, “Let me join you in your recovery, your suffering, your fear of the unknown, your desire to become healthy, to get your life back. Let me bear some of your risk with you.”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place. —Maya Angelou”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“By illustrating what it took for me to practice transplantation, and by painting a picture, with the stories of my patients, of how the discipline has touched so many, I hope to highlight the incredible gift transplantation is to all involved, from the donors to the recipients to those of us lucky enough to be the stewards of the organs. I also will show the true courage of the pioneers in transplant, those who had the courage to fail but also the courage to succeed.”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon

“Ось за що я люблю трансплантологію! Від початку, коли мені довелося мати справу з дуже хворими людьми, я зрозумів, що один із найтяжчих аспектів важкої хвороби - це розлука з тими, кого любиш. Навіть коли родина віддано піклується про пацієнта, недуга відокремлює здорових від хворих. Хворі самотні у своєму стражданні, самотні у проходженні процедур та операцій, самотні у смерті. Трансплантація все змінює. Аби вона відбулась, хтось мусить долучитися до тебе у твоїх стражданнях. Це може бути орган нещодавно загиблого - альтруїстичний дар від того, кого ти ніколи не зустрічав, або ж нирка чи фрагмент печінки від родича, друга або знайомого. У будь-якому разі хтось своїм рішенням каже: "Дозволь мені бути поруч із тобою у твоїх стражданнях, у твоєму одужанні, страху перед невідомим, у твоєму бажанні одужати, повернутися до звичайного життя. Дозволь мені розділити з тобою ризик".”
― Joshua D. Mezrich, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon