9 Gift-of-life? The Psychosocial Experiences ... 227to heart recipients, many liver recipients in the study were forthright in
their rejection of gift-of-life understandings of transplantation. Many
downplayed the magnitude of ‘the gift’, and a comment made by Jack
(when speaking of his transplant) reflected the general consensus of the
male liver recipients: ‘I don’t think you can be over precious about it
either. I mean, it’s not a miracle, it’s simply good medicine’.
Gift-of-Freedom: Dialysis and Kidney
Transplantation
Kidneys differ from other organs for transplant in a number of ways
that are consequential for the lived experience of transplantation
(Sharp 1995 ). While hearts and livers are life-saving organs, kidneys
can be considered quality of life organs: treatments such as dialysis can
replace the functioning of kidneys and those on dialysis can remain so
for extended periods of time. As regards social worth, there exists the
option for live kidney donation as well as cadaveric donation, so more
kidneys are available for transplant and this results in a decrease in their
social value (when compared with hearts, for example). Organs also dif-
fer widely in terms of their symbolic weight. While the heart represents
life, love and goodness, Svenaeus ( 2012 : 72) asks ‘what, really, is a kid-
ney symbolic of?’ An answer to this question does not spring readily to
mind.
The context of kidney transplantation is often less urgent than that of
heart or liver transplantation; however, it would be ill-conceived to infer
that this makes the experience of kidney transplantation somehow easier
or without serious consequence for the individuals concerned. Although
dialysis liberates these individuals from the limits imposed on the body
by end-stage renal failure, it can be anxiety provoking (i.e. remaining
alive depends on the dialysis machine), and involves an investment of
time and energy that can be exhausting (Russ et al. 2007 ). For some,
the treatment can be as burdensome as the disease itself (Schulz et al.
2012 ). In my research, prospective kidney recipients spoke at length
of the extent to which dialysis consumed their lives, in terms of both
the actual time spent in treatment and the mental burden of needing
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