Having kidney failure is not a unique experience. Neither is receiving a kidney transplant or undergoing dialysis. Adopting to irreversible uremia - a devastating illness- by assisting others to cope with their own life trial represents the best of human traits. Bonded by marriage for 42 years, I was privileged to love and live with a marvelous and unique individual whose approach to life with this horrific disease taught me to regard every moment of our existence as precious. Preparation of this volume had two main objectives: 1) To honor the author for all of efforts in behalf of kidney patients. 2) To disseminate her insights and wisdom to those who may derive comfort and benefit from her words. Mildred (Barry) Friedman was a medical writer and patient advocate devoted to the American Association of Kidney Patients, who died at University Hospital of Brooklyn on September 21 st 1997 at the age of 61 of complications of type 1 diabetes. Barry, the second child of Leontine and Hardinge Barrett-Lennard, was born on October 17,1935 in Manhattan and attended Brooklyn College as a New York State Scholarship Awardee earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1953. She subsequently began teaching in the New York City elementary schools gaining a Master's degree in education. Following the birth of her third child, Barry developed both diabetes and Addison's disease forcing her retirement from teaching.

Having kidney failure is not a unique experience. Neither is receiving a kidney transplant or undergoing dialysis. Adopting to irreversible uremia - a devastating illness- by assisting others to cope with their own life trial represents the best of human traits. Bonded by marriage for 42 years, I was privileged to love and live with a marvelous and unique individual whose approach to life with this horrific disease taught me to regard every moment of our existence as precious. Preparation of this volume had two main objectives: 1) To honor the author for all of efforts in behalf of kidney patients. 2) To disseminate her insights and wisdom to those who may derive comfort and benefit from her words. Mildred (Barry) Friedman was a medical writer and patient advocate devoted to the American Association of Kidney Patients, who died at University Hospital of Brooklyn on September 21 st 1997 at the age of 61 of complications of type 1 diabetes. Barry, the second child of Leontine and Hardinge Barrett-Lennard, was born on October 17,1935 in Manhattan and attended Brooklyn College as a New York State Scholarship Awardee earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1953. She subsequently began teaching in the New York City elementary schools gaining a Master's degree in education. Following the birth of her third child, Barry developed both diabetes and Addison's disease forcing her retirement from teaching.

Given the tensions and demands of medicine, highly successful physicians and surgeons rarely achieve equal success as prose writers. It is truly extraordinary that a major, international pioneer in the controversial field of transplant surgery should have written a spellbinding, and heart-wrenching, autobiography. Thomas Starzl grew up in LeMars, Iowa, the son of a newspaper publisher and a nurse. His father also wrote science fiction and was acquainted with the writer Ray Bradbury. Starzl left the family business to enter Northwestern University Medical School where he earned both and M.D. and a PhD. While he was a student, and later during his surgical internship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he began the series of animal experiments that led eventually to the world\u2019s first transplantation of the human liver in 1963. Throughout his career, first at the University of Colorado and then at the University of Pittsburgh, he has aroused both worldwide admiration and controversy. His technical innovations and medical genius have revolutionized the field, but Starzl has not hesitated to address the moral and ethical issues raised by transplantation. In this book he clearly states his position on many hotly debated issues including brain death, randomized trials for experimental drugs, the costs of transplant operations, and the system for selecting organ recipients from among scores of desperately ill patients. There are many heroes in the story of transplantation, and many \u201cpuzzle people,\u201d the patients who, as one journalist suggested, might one day be made entirely of various transplanted parts. They are old and young, obscure and world famous. Some have been taken into the hearts of America, like Stormie Jones, the brave and beautiful child from Texas. Every patient who receives someone else\u2019s organ - and Starzl remembers each one - is a puzzle. \u201cIt was not just the acquisition of a new part,\u201d he writes. \u201cThe rest of the body had to change in many ways before the gift could be accepted. It was necessary for the mind to see the world in a different way.\u201d The surgeons and physicians who pioneered transplantation were also changed: they too became puzzle people. \u201cSome were corroded or destroyed by the experience, some were sublimated, and none remained the same.\u201d