•10:57 AM
Recently there was a movie added to the OnDemand Movies feature of our Cable television. It is a movie that I do not have the strength to watch. I just don't need that kind of emotional stress in my life.
Last summer, my mother-in-law brought me My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.
"Jill," she said, "I thought that you would really like this. Read it and tell me what you think."
So, I fondled it, as I like to do before reading and had a fleeting thought that this story might be a little too much for me to handle. Children who get cancer cannot make for a "feel-good" kind of story. But I wanted to read it anyway. Something about it drew me in ... the legal aspects, perhaps. Maybe I needed a good cry. Or the medical issues. Something.
By the time I got to the end of the book, I was an emotional wreck. I sobbed openly while reading the last couple of chapters, sending all my children into another room so that I could grieve in private. Poor Caiden had a (real) panic attack because he thought there was something really wrong with me. And I guess there was ... I had a broken heart.
In case you live in a cave and you have not heard about this story, I will give you a quick recap. Well, nothing is really "quick" about me but I'll try my best.
Kate is three years old when she is diagnosed with a grave form of cancer - leukemia, I think. The only hope is a perfect match as a donor; when Kate's older brother is disqualified, Kate's parents conceive another child in the hopes of producing a donor - which raises the first moral question.
Should people have babies to save other babies? I guess there are many reasons for a person to have a child. Maybe giving life to save a life isn't the worst reason ... but is it a good reason? I am sitting here, up on the fence, because I honestly don't know if there is a "right" answer to that question.
In the beginning, the only thing that was to be donated was the cord blood ... rich in platelets and other great stuff needed to fight off the cancer in Kate's blood. But as the years go by, little Anna becomes a human donor machine. It has been some time since I read this story, but if I can remember correctly Anna donated "stuff" to her sister several times; until it seemed as though if Kate had dry eyes, her mother would call Anna into the room and they would extract some tears from her.
The story really begins when Anna is eleven years old, and Kate is in need of a kidney. All of the other treatments she has endured have placed undue stress on her kidneys, and without a transplant she will die. But the decision has been made that Anna will provide the kidney. However, she does not want to be a donor for her sister any more so she hires herself an attorney in the hopes of winning medical emanicipation from her parents. She wants to be able to make the decisions regarding which medical treatments she will participate in.
The novel explores the legal questions/problems associated with this unprecedented situation ... as well as the moral/ethical issues. And don't forget about the impact on the rest of the family ... the ongoing illness as well as the impending legal decision. It really is a great read, if you can stand the emotional stress.
At the end of the story - and this is the part where I got a little hysterical - Anna wins emancipation; but only after she is forced to confess that it is Kate who does not want the treatments any longer. So, Anna is granted medical emancipation and she does not have to act as a donor for her sister. On her way from the Court House to the Hospital (in her lawyer's car) to tell her sister the news, they are struck and Anna is killed. That's right, she is declared brain dead in the ER.
But she is a candidate for organ donation.
So, in the end, she saves her sister's life and quite possibly, the lives of some other children. And we are left thinking that the sole purpose of this eleven-year-old child's life was to act as a supplier of bodily materials and parts. Little Anna took on the weight of the world in keeping her sister's secret and defying her mother's wishes, all the while knowing that her family was being pulled apart. But she did it for her sister ... just like she had done for her whole life.
My thoughts turned to Anna's mother. She is a desperate woman who cannot see past the goal of saving Kate. In fact, when Anna was born she admitted to herself that she was not interested in her new baby at all; but only in what she could give to her dying sister. It was as though she had created a "thing" instead of a person. A supplier. Kate's mother is blinded in her attempt to save her daughter; she cannot think in any terms other than saving Kate. Which I get. However, she lost all perspective with respect to what is in the best interests of everyone. Including Kate. I liken it to being in some sort of tunnel, where it is dark and small; and the light at the end is reached each time the current crisis is dealt with. Until the next hurdle, when the confining darkness descends and a solution must be found. I have felt this way before. Things are coming at you and all you can do react. Deal with each thing as it comes; but you lose perspective because you are too busy trying to come up with a quick fix.
Don't we all understand the mother's desperation. I mean, if someone told me that one of my children was critically ill, I would do anything to save him/her. Anything. I would cut off my own arm, I would sell my soul, I would scream, I would beg, I would run around in a circle seventy-three times if I thought it would help. Anything. And, I am willing to bet that you feel exactly the same way that I do. When my Caiden was in the NICU, I would have done anything to help him. But all I could do was smother him with love ... which, luckily, I am very, very good at.
And, I also understand that knowing one of your children had something that could help another one of your children would be a huge influencing factor. If one of your daughter's had yellow shoes, and the other daughter needed yellow shoes, and they wore the same size, I would insist that the girls share their shoes. However, this was not sharing shoes. It was sharing DNA and organs. So, I understand this push (by the mother) to help but I don't know if I agree with it. It seems as though some of us need to always find a solution for the problem, no matter what it is. And finding the solution becomes more important than the actual impact of executing the solution. As a parent, I would need to know that I had thought of every possible way to fix the problem. I had done everything that I could to save my baby.
But poor little Anna grew up feeling as though she was nothing more than a donor. She was on hold until a part of her was needed for Kate. Did she feel loved by her mother?
There are children that have been born for the exact same reason as Anna. For real. And, how are they coping with their role in their family? Do they feel loved?
When my children ask me why I wanted a baby, I can give them all sorts of reasons. I had an inexplicable need to become a mother; I desperately wanted to experience pregnancy and giving birth; I wanted to snuggle a baby of my very own; I wanted to teach someone about the world; I wanted to be surrounded by a family of my very own. And, after I had my first baby, I wanted another one because the first one brought me a joy that I did not know existed. And I wanted a third one because if two brought me that much joy, imagine the delight I would experience from three little miracles.
However, I cannot imagine explaining to my child that I had it because I needed an organ donor.
But having said all that ... I can understand why parents might do it. Or consider it.
There is no right answer.
My Sister's Keeper (the movie) is OnDemand. But I don't think I can watch it. And so, even though it has almost been a year, these are my thoughts on this book.
I bet my mother-in-law is sorry she asked.
Last summer, my mother-in-law brought me My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.
"Jill," she said, "I thought that you would really like this. Read it and tell me what you think."
So, I fondled it, as I like to do before reading and had a fleeting thought that this story might be a little too much for me to handle. Children who get cancer cannot make for a "feel-good" kind of story. But I wanted to read it anyway. Something about it drew me in ... the legal aspects, perhaps. Maybe I needed a good cry. Or the medical issues. Something.
By the time I got to the end of the book, I was an emotional wreck. I sobbed openly while reading the last couple of chapters, sending all my children into another room so that I could grieve in private. Poor Caiden had a (real) panic attack because he thought there was something really wrong with me. And I guess there was ... I had a broken heart.
In case you live in a cave and you have not heard about this story, I will give you a quick recap. Well, nothing is really "quick" about me but I'll try my best.
Kate is three years old when she is diagnosed with a grave form of cancer - leukemia, I think. The only hope is a perfect match as a donor; when Kate's older brother is disqualified, Kate's parents conceive another child in the hopes of producing a donor - which raises the first moral question.
Should people have babies to save other babies? I guess there are many reasons for a person to have a child. Maybe giving life to save a life isn't the worst reason ... but is it a good reason? I am sitting here, up on the fence, because I honestly don't know if there is a "right" answer to that question.
In the beginning, the only thing that was to be donated was the cord blood ... rich in platelets and other great stuff needed to fight off the cancer in Kate's blood. But as the years go by, little Anna becomes a human donor machine. It has been some time since I read this story, but if I can remember correctly Anna donated "stuff" to her sister several times; until it seemed as though if Kate had dry eyes, her mother would call Anna into the room and they would extract some tears from her.
The story really begins when Anna is eleven years old, and Kate is in need of a kidney. All of the other treatments she has endured have placed undue stress on her kidneys, and without a transplant she will die. But the decision has been made that Anna will provide the kidney. However, she does not want to be a donor for her sister any more so she hires herself an attorney in the hopes of winning medical emanicipation from her parents. She wants to be able to make the decisions regarding which medical treatments she will participate in.
The novel explores the legal questions/problems associated with this unprecedented situation ... as well as the moral/ethical issues. And don't forget about the impact on the rest of the family ... the ongoing illness as well as the impending legal decision. It really is a great read, if you can stand the emotional stress.
At the end of the story - and this is the part where I got a little hysterical - Anna wins emancipation; but only after she is forced to confess that it is Kate who does not want the treatments any longer. So, Anna is granted medical emancipation and she does not have to act as a donor for her sister. On her way from the Court House to the Hospital (in her lawyer's car) to tell her sister the news, they are struck and Anna is killed. That's right, she is declared brain dead in the ER.
But she is a candidate for organ donation.
So, in the end, she saves her sister's life and quite possibly, the lives of some other children. And we are left thinking that the sole purpose of this eleven-year-old child's life was to act as a supplier of bodily materials and parts. Little Anna took on the weight of the world in keeping her sister's secret and defying her mother's wishes, all the while knowing that her family was being pulled apart. But she did it for her sister ... just like she had done for her whole life.
My thoughts turned to Anna's mother. She is a desperate woman who cannot see past the goal of saving Kate. In fact, when Anna was born she admitted to herself that she was not interested in her new baby at all; but only in what she could give to her dying sister. It was as though she had created a "thing" instead of a person. A supplier. Kate's mother is blinded in her attempt to save her daughter; she cannot think in any terms other than saving Kate. Which I get. However, she lost all perspective with respect to what is in the best interests of everyone. Including Kate. I liken it to being in some sort of tunnel, where it is dark and small; and the light at the end is reached each time the current crisis is dealt with. Until the next hurdle, when the confining darkness descends and a solution must be found. I have felt this way before. Things are coming at you and all you can do react. Deal with each thing as it comes; but you lose perspective because you are too busy trying to come up with a quick fix.
Don't we all understand the mother's desperation. I mean, if someone told me that one of my children was critically ill, I would do anything to save him/her. Anything. I would cut off my own arm, I would sell my soul, I would scream, I would beg, I would run around in a circle seventy-three times if I thought it would help. Anything. And, I am willing to bet that you feel exactly the same way that I do. When my Caiden was in the NICU, I would have done anything to help him. But all I could do was smother him with love ... which, luckily, I am very, very good at.
And, I also understand that knowing one of your children had something that could help another one of your children would be a huge influencing factor. If one of your daughter's had yellow shoes, and the other daughter needed yellow shoes, and they wore the same size, I would insist that the girls share their shoes. However, this was not sharing shoes. It was sharing DNA and organs. So, I understand this push (by the mother) to help but I don't know if I agree with it. It seems as though some of us need to always find a solution for the problem, no matter what it is. And finding the solution becomes more important than the actual impact of executing the solution. As a parent, I would need to know that I had thought of every possible way to fix the problem. I had done everything that I could to save my baby.
But poor little Anna grew up feeling as though she was nothing more than a donor. She was on hold until a part of her was needed for Kate. Did she feel loved by her mother?
There are children that have been born for the exact same reason as Anna. For real. And, how are they coping with their role in their family? Do they feel loved?
When my children ask me why I wanted a baby, I can give them all sorts of reasons. I had an inexplicable need to become a mother; I desperately wanted to experience pregnancy and giving birth; I wanted to snuggle a baby of my very own; I wanted to teach someone about the world; I wanted to be surrounded by a family of my very own. And, after I had my first baby, I wanted another one because the first one brought me a joy that I did not know existed. And I wanted a third one because if two brought me that much joy, imagine the delight I would experience from three little miracles.
However, I cannot imagine explaining to my child that I had it because I needed an organ donor.
But having said all that ... I can understand why parents might do it. Or consider it.
There is no right answer.
My Sister's Keeper (the movie) is OnDemand. But I don't think I can watch it. And so, even though it has almost been a year, these are my thoughts on this book.
I bet my mother-in-law is sorry she asked.
discussion,
family,
parenting,
stress
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3 comments:
Jill, I didn't read the book or see the movie, because I,like you, would be way too emotional. But Megan saw the movie and told me all about it and apparently the movie ends very differently than the book. So maybe you could watch it. At times, I have enough emotional "cases" at work to deal with, so I don't feel like exposing myself to sad movies or books. Or asking myself what I would do. Because you're right, you would do ANYTHING, wouldn't you?
Hey Annette ... I know how the movie ends and it is very different from the book. Equally as sad, and perhaps thought-provoking in a different way from the novel. I am drawn to these sad stories and sometimes it makes me wonder about myself!! LOL I think I find it cathartic for some reason ... but after reading this story I felt emotionally drained and exhausted. I don't envy the things that you must have to deal with at the hospital; I would be crying all the time I think!!
I've heard about this story ----both the book and the movie--- and I'll pass on both of them ---just too sad and too much to think about!