Anja Marie Bornø Jensen

A Sense of Absence: The Staging of Heroic Deaths and Ongoing Lives among American Organ Donor Families

This chapter deals with particular human encounters of absence and loss as they are expressed by the families of American organ donors. After tragically losing a family member and saying yes to donation of the organs, many of the families of organ donors formulate perceptions of life, death, and organ donation that seem to insist on the continuing existence of the dead donor in different ways. These ideas are mainly structured and encouraged by the American organ organizations, supporting donor families in the time after the organ donation and wishing to transform the traumatic experience of losing a family member into positive sense-making stories about organ donation.

Make Sure Somebody Will Survive from This: Transformative Practices of Hope among Danish Organ Donor Families.

Based on anthropological fieldwork among Danish organ donor families and hospital staff in neurointensive care units, this article explores the transformative practices of hope in Danish organ donation. Focusing on various phases of the organ donation process, I demonstrate how families and professionals practice hope in astounding ways: when hoping for organs, when hoping for the end of patient suffering, when hoping for the usability of the donor body, and when hoping to help future donor families by sharing painful experiences. By focusing on such practices and transformations of hope, this article sheds light on the social negotiations of life and death among families and staffs in medical contexts and describes how the dignity of the deceased donor and the usability of the donor body are closely connected in family attempts to make donation decisions meaningful during and after a tragic death.

Guardians of the Gift: The Emotional Challenges of Heart and Lung Transplant Professionals in Denmark

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the emotional challenges encountered by doctors and nurses caring for heart and lung transplant patients. Organ transplantation enables body parts from the dead to become usable in patients with no other life-saving option. These exchanges are not possible without transplant professionals carefully selecting, guiding and interacting with organ recipients before, during and after the transplant. Based on anthropological fieldwork at a Danish heart and lung transplant unit, the paper explores how doctors and nurses experience and handle the emotional challenges of their working life. By focusing on the everyday life of the transplant unit which, contrary to public understanding of transplant miracles, is sometimes characterised by sad cases and devastation, this paper argues that transplant professionals operate in the presence of death. Medically and emotionally they are at risk. They must take the difficult decisions of whether to admit critically ill patients onto the organ waiting list; face the distress of post-transplant sufferings and deaths; and deal with organ recipients who do not behave according to post-transplant recommendations. Drawing on a familiar metaphor for donated organs, it is suggested that transplant doctors and nurses are ‘guardians of the gift’. Attention to the emotional burdens and rewards of this particular position enables new understandings of the practices of transplant medicine, of gift exchange theory, and of the role of emotion in medical practice.