Other Endings: Organ Transplantation and the Burdens of Hope

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 on