“Now, I Am a Proper Human Being”: Kidney Transplantation in Cyprus

Abstract

By exploring kidney transplantation as a social process, I describe the variety of lived experience of transplantation and explain how the sociocultural and medical context among Greek-Cypriots on the island of Cyprus works as a template of reference and understanding for this surgery. Patients understand kidney transplantation as a means for the return to normality, as the mechanism to become "proper human beings" (σωστóς άνθρωπoς), able to fulfill social obligations and achieve important cultural goals. Such perceptions reflect medical discourses on the island, which present kidney transplantation as the mechanism to enable a return to normal social life.

Chronic Living in a Communicable World

“…In a world with multiple diseases, millions of people lead (or seek to lead) insulin-lives, chemo-lives, immunosuppressant-lives, dialysis-lives, factor-lives, antiretroviral-lives, antidepressant-lives, memantine-lives, transplant-lives, corticosteroid-lives, and more (Constantinou 2012;Dokumaci 2020;Greco 2019;Kingod 2020;Lee 2019;Livingston 2012;Whyte 2015). At the same time, many interlace biomedical treatments with so-called "traditional, complementary and alternative" treatments.…”

Fluid illness

“…In high-income countries, multiple studies have explored how dialysis affects the lives and identities of patients, families, and caregivers (Tijerina 2009;Lindsay, Macgregor, and Fry 2014;McQuoid 2017;Kierans and Maynooth 2001;Constantinou 2012), and the ethical implications of using dialysis to prolong the lives of people who are not candidates for kidney transplantation (Russ, Shim, and Kaufman 2005). In lower-income countries, dialysis research tends to focus on strategies to disseminate services to more patients, reduce rates of infection, and improve patient adherence.…”