Sunday, March 18, 2018

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi was an excellent and profound book by the late neurosurgeon who died from cancer in March 2015 and is survived by his wife and their young daughter.

Kalanithi grew up in a family that heavily valued education and after they moved from the Northeast to Kingman, Arizona, his mother got a college prep reading list for her children and Kalanithi at ten read the book 1984, then others such as The Count of Monte Cristo, Robinson Crusoe, The Last of the Mohicans, and Don Quixote, developing a love of literature. He attended Stanford, completing degrees in Human Biology and English Literature, and went through Medical School at Yale.

Kalanithi decided to practice neurosurgery and the book shows his interest in the counseling of a patient or loved one of a patient through horrific decisions and times, almost a pastoral role in relation to medicine. While he was about to embark on the next phase of his career, Kalanithi was diagnosed with terminal cancer and in the book he notes how he returned to performing surgery, with him writing “even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living.”

Kalanithi and his wife Lucy decided after the diagnosis to have a child and his cancer began to resist the medications he was on some five month's after his daughter Cady born, with Kalanithi then dying three months later. The book is great reading... profound, sad, uplifting, and a well-crafted account by someone who knew that his time was short, didn't know exactly how short it would be and fought to extend his life. Kalanithi in relation to the times right after his diagnosis, quotes writer Samuel Beckett with “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”