Letters for Lizzie: A Story of Love, Friendship, and a Battle for Life

by James O'Donnell

Having just made a cross-country move, Jim expected that his new assignment from God was to teach in a small college in Indiana. He wasn't prepared for the task of dealing with the onset of his wife's battle for her life. A prayer network began. With personal reflections on a painful, years-long ordeal of cancer and heart disease, this book is the compilation of those insights, as well as insights on faith, illness, and healing. A special section gives advice on "how to think" and "what to do" when faced with life-threatening illness. This is a remarkable true story of a husband's love for his sick wife.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm very conflicted about this book.

On one hand I really enjoyed it and read through it quickly. On the other I feel like the husband was a bit pompous and sniveling as a caregiver. It isn't easy to be a caregiver and everyone deals with it on their own terms - but if your wife is on a heart transplant list as a "next in line" why do you go to Vermont - even if it is to give your kid a piece of normalcy. What also go me is that out of the two of them Lizzie - the cancer patient - seemed to be the stoic one holding it together. Yet, the husband would complain about her not sharing anything about what she was feeling because every time she did he burst out in tears. One statement in particular really irritated me. He said she called him one day from the hospital and she sounded glum so he thought that this was a day he needed to be her cheerleader. I almost yelled out - YOU SHOULD BE HER CHEERLEADER EVERYDAY - not just the days she is feeling blue.

I realize that I come from this at a very different angle - just having lost my mother from her 2 year bout of colon cancer. I was a caregiver and I know that it isn't easy and that it gets tough. But at the same time part of being a caregiver is being strong for the other person - not just when they ask for it but especially when they don't.

On the parts I enjoyed, I think it had some great insights to being a caregiver and the roller coaster ride that it is. There were a number of passages that I highlighted or thought - yep that is exactly what I felt or thought. And his discussions about faith and god was astounding. This book was almost as much about his relationship with god and faith as it was about cancer. I will be pulling a lot of this out and saving the quotes so I can come back to them on other days when I need some reassurances.

All in all - I will b putting this on my list of books to suggest to friends when someone they know has been diagnosed with cancer so that they can explore the book on their own. Maybe they will take a different view on it.

[Jim Gleason · Rating 5 out of 5]

As patient, family, or friend affected by the challenge of a transplant, do you feel alone, that your life is on a roller coaster, that you are the first one to ever face the life events around you? Reading this book, Letters for Lizzie, may help you put life in perspective. Readers may feel their own challenges less severe after reading Jim’s life facing a family move with a drastic cut in pay, his young wife’s death sentence with cancer, then her need for a heart transplant from treatments that stayed her cancer.

But that is only the surface story. Theirs is much deeper with roots in Jim’s own rediscovered faith in a loving God who seems to be facing their family with trials that bring the biblical story of Job to mind. Their faith and those trials result in a roller coaster ride that speaks to the strength of human endurance and resiliency that should come as inspiration in sharing their hope, frustration, optimism, smiles, tears and fears.

Letters’ format is interesting as their story is told through thirteen of Jim’s letters, each prefaced with his “looking backs” describing their life situations when writing that letter. The letters are family news updates to their many friends “back East” along with an ongoing appeal for supportive prayer. Through them, you share Jim’s emotions and innermost conflicts as he deals with the trials. Leading a life of goodness he expected God’s support, not such health trials with his beloved Lizzie, mother of their three boys, aged 6 to 18, who are each going through their own growth challenges. Those of us who have gone through the transplant challenge are often heard to say that we feel our supporters actually go through the harder part of it, and when you hear Lizzie’s attitude, you get that feeling here too. I found myself wanting to hear more from Lizzie in this story, to get the fuller picture of their life’s experience together through all this. While she does write in one of the later letters, that contribution was all too brief for me.

I enjoyed reading Letters, hitting home as it did with my own personal heart transplant and cancer survivor experiences. This short book (about two hours to read its 203 pages) is well written and offers surprisingly clear explanations of medical procedures they experienced. Through photos on the final pages you even get to “see” the family you have grown to know so intimately.

But let me offer you with a caution. After Lizzie’s successful but challenging heart transplant, Jim gives us a summary from eight years later. In that we see the reality that some face, sailing choppy waters despite their new organ. His family is still intact, Lizzie is alive and cancer free, but more medical challenges had to be overcome. Theirs is real life. My own experience is that for most, post transplant life is more positive. If you are lying in a hospital bed awaiting your life saving transplant, such reality may not be what you need just now. Maybe your loved ones could read just the letters to you, saving that final chapter until later when you know your own outcomes and can put this into perspective. Focus instead on the four hard learned survival factors Jim shares on page 57, or better yet, recall the surgeon’s comment as he read in Lizzie’s charts something he had never seen recorded before: “…the patient’s smiling!” From the Introduction: “May these letters give you hope amidst your darkest fear. May you find strength in connecting with others who will love you at your worst hour; and may you, in the strange darkness that life can send, find the outstretched hand of the most powerful Unseen.” These may be your key lessons to take away from this reading.

see this and more than a hundred other organ donation/transplant related books - many with my personal reviews - at http://www.trioweb.org/resources/book...

[Carol Mowbray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Man's view of his wife's breast cancer.. excellent

[Rachelle]

As touching and inspiring as this book was...there wasn't much depth...seemed to much like a Self Help book to me.