Abstract
Organ transplantation is often held to epitomize the power and promise of biomedicine. Yet life after transplant does not so clearly mark an ‘after’ to illness, and instead requires close monitoring and treating for organ rejection, graft failure, or the side effects of medication regimens. Such medical domains are counterbalanced, in turn, by relations of kinship, friendship, home and work life. In this Position Piece, I call for attention to the interconnected tensions among these domains, focusing on one illustrative case example: that of Janet, a three-time kidney recipient. By detailing Janet’s lifelong imbrication of daily life with vulnerability and biomedical intervention, I delineate the mismatch between popular imaginings of transplant as ‘cure’ and the realities of living a life that is never quite beyond illness.
Highlights
Organ transplantation serves as one of the ‘crown jewels’ in what historian Emily Abel (2013, 1) has called ‘medicine’s triumphal epic, which emphasizes the sensational advances that have rescued people from death’
That transplant-related public discourse in the United States is saturated with powerful, pervasive forms of hope and consolation, revealed through human interest news stories, promotional materials meant to motivate potential organ donors, and advertising of regional health systems’ transplant programs
Almost as a genre, messages around transplant tend to follow a familiar narrative of dramatic transformation: the gravely ill patient becomes a thriving, active individual through high-tech medicine and the generosity of organ donors and their families (Scheper-Hughes 2007; Sharp 2006)
Summary
Organ transplantation serves as one of the ‘crown jewels’ in what historian Emily Abel (2013, 1) has called ‘medicine’s triumphal epic, which emphasizes the sensational advances that have rescued people from death’ (see Kaufman 2015). As one does what it takes to raise children, hold employment, care for elder kin, maintain friendships, play, and sustain a household while taking medicine, managing side effects, monitoring lab values, and undergoing medical procedures, one is living with transplant and never quite beyond illness. If the ideal of a successful transplant is represented as life beyond the reaches of illness – a return to the ‘normal’ as envisioned by patients and loved ones – the lived reality of transplantation reveals that normalcy is elusive (Wolf-Meyer 2014; see Manderson 1999) and is tethered to the chronicities (Estroff 1993; Manderson and Smith-Morris 2010) of enduring medical intervention and monitoring (see Heinemann 2015).
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