Dying to Live: From Heart Transplant to Abundant Life
by Gaea Shaw
Dying to Live is about facing challenges. Being miserable. Finding faith.
Learning to let go and learning to trust. It is the inspiring story of Gaea Shaw’s
journey from heart transplant recipient to gold medal winner at the Olympic-style
Transplant Games. But Gaea’s story is much more than that. Her gift to her readers
is that she encourages each of us to see that we all face our own challenges—and
that each of us can experience an abundant life, filled with gratitude,
no matter the odds.Purchase Book online from: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, Amazon.co.jp.
“Gaea Shaw gives her readers a transplant of love in her new book, Dying to Live: From Heart Transplant to Abundant Life. This is an important work for anyone who may be considering organ transplant, organ donation, transplant care-giving, or simply living more intensively. Shaw has brought into view the complexity of the transplant experience in a superbly poignant and human way.” —Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Author of With Roots in Heaven: One Woman’s Passionate Journey into the Heart of Her Faith
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Excerpt from the book:
It was November 18, 1993, and dinner was delicious. It was Barry’s birthday, and our friend Nino had come to our home in Lafayette, Colorado, to cook with me. Nino’s a great cook and the afternoon passed swiftly as we prepared our favorite dishes. I cooked Indian food; he cooked Mexican. What a feast.Later that night I started wheezing, which was unusual for me. Within moments I could barely breathe. Barry called the doctor and we were told to go immediately to the emergency room. Sara, our daughter, was only five years old at the time and already asleep. Luckily, our neighbor was willing to watch her while we rushed to the nearest hospital. Barry stayed with me in the emergency room until I was transferred by ambulance to University Hospital in Denver. Then he went home to be with Sara. I was scared, lying in that hospital room, not knowing what was happening to me.
I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure (CHF), a condition in which the heart fails to pump blood with normal efficiency, affecting the other organs. My lungs, unable to function normally for lack of blood flow, filled with fluid, a condition known medically as pulmonary edema. The salty dinner seemed to have been the reason for the fluid retention that evening; but the underlying cause, as we were soon to find out, was more serious.
After the drama and fear of the previous evening, just waking up and being alive was ecstasy. When Barry came the next morning we were both struck that, instead of being scared and upset, we felt a measure of grace and peace, which was both inexplicable and undeniable. Of course, grace and peace were not all that we were to feel.
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