My Sister’s Kepper – Jodi Picoult

Review by Alison

Meet the Fitzgerald family. There is Brian – father/fire fighter, Sara – Mum/ex-lawyer and their children Kate, Jesse and Anna.
Kate was diagnosed with “APL … a subgroup of myeloid leukemia. The rate of survival … is twenty to thirty percent, if treatment starts immediately.” at 2 years of age.

5 years pass and the treatment is not enough as the cancer spreads.
Kate needs a bone marrow transfer or she will die.

Brian and Sara come to the decision to have another child to hope that it will be a match. They have Jesse and he is not a match. They try again and their third child, Anna, is a match.

For many years, Anna has been there for Kate as a loving sister and a donor. Every time Kate goes in for treatment, Anna is the one giving.

All this changes with the discovery that  Kate needs a kidney.

Anna has known all along her role in the family without being told. She is there for Kate. Her thinking starts to change when she looks into the risks of Kidney transplants and decides she cannot do it. Her mother Sara cannot see the issue and pushes Anna.

The only thing Anna feels she can do is sue her parents for the right to make her own medical decisions.

The movie was OK, the book has a different, more intense ending.

This is the only book I have read, that has made me cry. It is fast paced with the ups and downs of a roller-coaster ride. It really pushes the boundaries of medical and moral dilemmas.