Heart transplant

Wednesday

Sam Leith

Rachel Clarke: The Story of a Heart

48 min listen

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Rachel Clarke, author of the Baillie Gifford longlisted new book The Story of a Heart. Rachel tells me how she came so intimately to tell the story of 9-year-old Keira, whose death in a car accident and donation of her heart gave a chance at life to a dying stranger, Max. She describes the medical and conceptual changes that led up to that extraordinary possibility and explains how, as a medic, you have to be able to combine technical professionalism with a sense of the sanctity of the human beings you work with. And she catches us up on how Max is doing eight years on. This podcast is in association with Serious Readers. Use offer code ‘TBC’ for £100 off any HD Light and free UK delivery. Go to: www.seriousreaders.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

The heart-rending story of a child’s heart transplant

Max Johnson’s life while he waited for a heart transplant had become so miserable and traumatic that he didn’t care whether he carried on or not. Indeed, the colourless, almost lifeless nine-year-old recorded a video saying he wanted to die. His parents felt as though they were on ‘death row’ as they waited for a donor. They knew, too, that the call announcing there was a heart for their son would mean that somewhere else in Britain a family was mourning. They would benefit from the sudden death of someone they were initially only told was an ‘age-appropriate donor’. Max’s mother read between the lines: her son was getting the heart of another nine-year-old.