It would be easy to assume that the story of Elizabeth Rothenberg's battle with cystic fibrosis is one of a brave young woman staying constantly positive in the face of tremendous adversity. But situations such as hers are rarely that simple. Thankfully, the portrait that emerges in her memoir, Breathing for a Living, is that of a complex and very real human being who experiences joy, anger, despair, and hopefulness while struggling to live the kind of normal life most of her fellow college students take for granted. And while her candor is admirable, what makes Rothenberg a remarkable author is her dedication to just getting words written down on the page at times when many would simply retreat from the world. Through an agonized process of waiting for a lung transplant, she writes down exactly what she's feeling. She writes extensively as her body fights the disease and struggles to accept the new lungs. And as she is shuttled back and forth between her New York home, her academic career at Brown, and numerous emergency hospital stays, she keeps on writing. Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at three days old, Rothenberg spent much of her life in and out of hospital rooms so her medical knowledge is extensive and well documented. One gets the impression that staying on top of this information helped her feel at least somewhat in control of her own situation and it lends a steady gravity to her emotionally charged memoir. The book is a pastiche of e-mails to friends, journal entries, and the occasional snapshot. It looks very much like a college kid's scrapbook, which, in many ways, it is. Rothenberg’s energetic prose is highly informal and probably more guileless than one would see from a more seasoned writer. But that intimacy and simplicity adds to the charm and, as Rothenberg's health deteriorates, the heartbreak as well. By the end of Breathing for a Living, the reader loses a friend but gains a greater appreciation of what it means to live. --John Moe


From Publishers Weekly
"I'm a typical college student, if there is such a thing," writes Rothenberg in this far from typical work. "Except that I won't be able to look back on my life from an old age." Rothenberg, who died in March at the age of 22, originally wrote these calm, devastating lines in an essay as a freshman at Brown University. During her sophomore year, after Rothenberg became so ill from cystic fibrosis that she had to leave school, she decided to weave this essay into a much longer account. Starting early in 2001, as she waited in Boston for a double lung transplant, and continuing until her death, Rothenberg collected her personal diary entries, poems and copies of the e-mails she wrote to her many friends-dispatches from the battlefield of her own body. Shining through every report, every raw or bittersweet detail, is a fierce dedication to honesty and an immense desire to connect to friends and to life. "We have lungs," one of her doctors calls to tell her early one morning. Rothenberg describes repeating the phrase into the phone to her still-sleeping parents; they were on their feet and packing by the time she repeated the joyous phrase to other friends, who repeated it like a mantra into mobile phones until the waiting room at Boston's Children's Hospital was overflowing with people who loved her-"Team Laura." Too soon, however, the joy of the transplant and her return to Brown gives way to descriptions of one setback after another, culminating in rejection of the lungs. Refusing to indulge in even a wisp of false hope or consolation, Rothenberg reminds us that there is a power in us that is greater than even the greatest suffering. This slim book will help anyone whose life has been touched by cystic fibrosis, and countless others as well. It is an unforgettably real testament of the strength of one human spirit, and of our common human wish to know and say and be the truth.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From the New England Journal of Medicine, December 25, 2003
"What kept me going was, I think, that writing for me is a way of understanding what is happening to me, of thinking hard things out," the poet May Sarton wrote. ". . . Perhaps it is the need to remake order out of chaos over and over again. For art is order, but it is made out of the chaos of life" (At Seventy: A Journal. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984). This quotation from one of Sarton's journals might well serve as an introduction to the genre of modern memoir, and it is a particularly apt description of Laura Rothenberg's Breathing for a Living. The most obvious difference between the books of the two women is that the excerpt above was written when Sarton was in her 70s and still deeply engaged in a life of creativity and observation, whereas Rothenberg died of cystic fibrosis when she was 22. And yet the two women had similar impulses: to probe, to find out "what is happening to me," and in so doing, to forge literary vessels that make sense of the lives they lived. There are many reasons to read a memoir, but ultimately it is the voice of the memoirist that makes the experience valuable. He or she may write of a simple, prosaic life or of a life of privilege or historical significance. But how well the author uses written language to allow others to inhabit his or her life is what elevates a memoir beyond the commonplace. Rothenberg's voice is strong and honest. The reader moves quickly through the stages of curiosity and empathy and within the first few pages has made a commitment to the author; her voice echoes in the reader's mind long after the book is closed. Rothenberg's memoir covers a period of several years and is presented in the form of dated journal entries that she wrote before, during, and after she received a lung transplant. The entries have been edited so that the reader receives enough information about the young woman's life and about her disease to move in step with her as she struggles with the decision to accept a transplant. We stick by her through the weeks and months of waiting, the medical complications, and the lulls and crises that follow. From the epilogue we learn -- and we rejoice in the fact -- that she had a brief reprieve from hospital life to move into an apartment in the city with her boyfriend. What is striking about Breathing for a Living is that the author is actually quite unremarkable. She is a college student from a middle-class family in New York City; the daughter of a doctor; a smart, creative, and gregarious young woman -- and she is living with a chronic illness. She might be anyone's daughter, anyone's niece, anyone's pal. She might even be me or you, because what she confronts and writes about in her journal is what we all know: we are living on borrowed time. For people working in health care, Breathing for a Living is perhaps most powerful as a statement about the world of a perpetual patient. For much of Rothenberg's life, hospital rooms were her home, and her childhood playmates were other kids and teenagers with cystic fibrosis. Year after year, she lost many of her dearest friends to the ravages of the disease. She had close relationships with her doctors, her pulmonary team, nurses, and others in the medical world; they were -- for better or worse -- her intimates. Some handled her gingerly, and some callously; some treated her as though she were a puzzle to be solved, and some gave themselves back to her as completely as she entrusted herself to them. She suffered neither fools nor discourteous residents gladly, but the smart ones, the funny ones, the sweet ones received the gift of her friendship. Photographs in the book attest to a sunny smile; portions of her journal show her gift for irony, her compassion, and her wry sense of humor. She must have been a terrific friend. The final devastation of Rothenberg's disease is not mentioned in the book, which was published just a few months after her death. Following the journal entries in Breathing for a Living, there is a section of testimony from family, friends, and medical personnel about their involvement with Rothenberg and her illness, especially during the time of her transplantation. Their comments are sad, brave, poignant, and haunting. Rothenberg's father, Jon, a physician, touches briefly on his own struggle for order in a vast ocean of feelings. We sense in him that same restless intelligence that his daughter gives voice to in her memoir. It's a voice that stays with you. Susan T. LandryCopyright © 2003 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The follow-up to an award-winning audio diary recorded for NPR, Breathing for a Living chronicles two and half stressful years in the life of cystic fibrosis patient Laura Rothenberg -- from her agonizing decision to undergo a risky double-lung transplant through ten perilous post-op months filled with frightening complications and heartbreaking setbacks.

In writing that is straightforward, emotionally honest, and utterly unsentimental, Rothenberg describes the details of her interrupted life: a college career (at Brown University) sidetracked by long hospitalizations; activities derailed by unpleasant medical procedures; and debilitating bouts of nausea, tremors, depression, and self-pity. Through it all, she remains doggedly determined to maintain some semblance of normalcy. She composes emails from her hospital bed, she makes plans between bronchoscopies -- and when her "numbers" are good and she's felling well, she skates, goes to school, watches Law & Order reruns, gorges on pudding cups, and hangs with her friends.

What shines through in this extraordinary memoir is Rothenberg's unflinching self-awareness. She rides the roller coaster of her emotions unapologetically, careening from the willfulness of a pouting child to the stoicism of the professional patient. Having said goodbye to so many friends with CF, she has hope, but no illusions.

Breathing for a Living opens with these two arresting sentences: "I am having a midlife crisis. Tomorrow I will be nineteen." Sadly, these mathematical calculations were far off the mark. On March 21, 2003, almost two years after her transplant, Laura Rothenberg died from chronic organ rejection. She was 22 years old. Anne Markowski

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Twenty-one-year-old Laura Rothenberg had always tried to live a normal life -- even with lungs that betrayed her and a constant awareness that she might not live to see her next birthday. Like most people born with cystic fibrosis, the chronic disease that affects primarily the lungs, Laura struggled to come to grips with a life that had already been compromised in many ways. Sometimes healthy and able to be at school, other times hospitalized for weeks, Laura found solace in keeping a diary. In her writing, she could be open, honest, and irreverent, like the young person she was. Yet behind this voice is a penetrating maturity about her mortality. The memoir opens with Laura's decision to undergo a lung transplant. From the waiting -- and all it implies -- to the surgery, recovery, and her struggle to lead a new life, Laura writes honestly about life, death, love, and friendship. Through it all, she reveals a will and temperament that is fierce and insightful.

FROM THE CRITICS

Booklist

Completely original ￯﾿ﾽ a crash course in the history of twentieth century culture . . . leaving us shaking with laughter.

The New York Times

"I'm a typical college student, if there is such a thing," she writes. "Except that I won't be able to look back on my life from an old age." An awareness of that immutable fact colors everything about Ms. Rothenberg's story, and yet her book is much more scrappy, tenacious and vibrant than it is sad. She succeeded resoundingly in turning those proverbial lemons into lemonade. — Janet Maslin

The Washington Post

Breathing for a Living tells the story of Rothenberg's fears and hopes as she waits for new lungs, and her discouragement, suffering and flashes of joy once she has received them. Woven among the descriptions of medical procedures and the inspiring, imperfect love of friends and family, an immense courage is on display here, a marvelous and rare courage. — Laura Rothenberg

Entertainment Weekly

Remarkably clear-eyed.

San Francisco Chronicle