“A Change of Heart” is a thought-provoking and incredible nonfiction book detailing the story of Claire Sylvia, who, when dianosed with a rare lung and heart disease, thought her life would soon be over. The only treatment option was a risky and still-experimental surgery, one that would take the heart and lungs from a donor and transplant them into Claire. Such a huge transplant carried many risks, and Claire didn’t know if she should take such a drastic step. But even if she died during the surgery, she was facing certain death if she did nothing. She felt she had nothing to lose, and went ahead with the surgery.
As she recovered from this amazingly invasive procedure, she began to notice that she didn’t feel quite like herself. She had the overwhelming impression that someone else was living in her body. She was having cravings and impulses that she’d never had before, and as she came home from the hospital and began living her day-to-day life, she noticed that her color preferences had changed. Where she once loved to wear red, she was now reaching for more subdued colors. She badly wanted to drink, but she’d never been a drinker before. She was more aggressive than she had been previous to the surgery, and she couldn’t explain why.
One night she dreamed about a young man, and when she awoke, she knew he was her donor. As she did research into his life and his legacy, she realized that all these impulses she’d been having came from him. He liked to drink. He liked to wear subdued colors. He was a little bit aggressive. The more she spoke with people who had known him, the more Claire realized, she had become like him.
This book is a fascinating look into the theory that our personality is encoded in our DNA, and that if a part of us were to be removed and implanted in someone else, that personality would go along with it. This is the conclusion Claire and her doctors reached, that the DNA of the donor of her heart and lungs was interacting with her own DNA and causing her to feel the feelings of her donor. Whether or not you think that’s possible, you’ll find the book intriguing.
(This book was published in 1997 by Little, Brown.)
Related Blogs:
Mom’s Heart Transplant Journey: Her Donor
How Much of This is Personality?