Books with category Medical Dilemmas
Displaying 2 books

Dying to Give

2023

by Gary B. Shelly

From award-winning author, Gary Shelly, comes a story that simply must be told…

The phone call informing Sarah Nealle that her six-year-old daughter, Amy, has been in a school bus accident sends her on a journey she could never have imagined nor planned for. Doctors. The ICU. An epidural hematoma. Respirators. Apnea tests. Nationwide publicity. A mogul who wants to buy her daughter's heart. The grieving mother on television begging for a liver to save her son. Hospitals that fight over a first-grader's body. Relatives seeking revenge. A conspiracy to end organ transplants. The hero who can't save his own son.

A ninety-two-year old who brings wisdom and peace, together with a reporter who reveals her own story. Then, the lonely decision of how to let her daughter die with dignity and perhaps fulfill a mission Amy would've volunteered for.

Will her family provide support? Might those who wait for organs applaud? Can someone who faces this impossible choice in the future learn from her? Would Amy be proud? How does one measure what is best and what is not when nothing makes sense?

Handle with Care

2009

by Jodi Picoult

When Willow is born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, her parents are devastated. She will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, enduring a lifetime of pain. Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they'd been given the choice.

Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of "luckier" parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it's all worth it because Willow is, funny as it seems, perfect. She's smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old, an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.

Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte had known earlier of Willow's illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?

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