When Breath Becomes Air: Pulitzer Prize Finalist

This brief memoir is interposed between a foreword by Abraham Verghese, the brilliant author of “Cutting for Stone” and an epilogue by author’s wife, Lucy Kalanithi. It is a beautifully, heartrending, deeply philosophical piece by an accomplished young man who dedicated heart and mind to his work and study in neurosurgery. He discovers that he has terminal lung cancer at the age of 36, just before completing his grueling neurosurgical residency and embarking on the career he has worked so hard to attain. The book is very thoughtful and reflective in nature, especially upon the meaning of life. It made me wonder if the author was truly always so interested in finding the meaning of life, or if only when told of this terminal diagnosis, that reflection back on his life made this search so apparent. As one nears death, what is most important, becomes glaringly more obvious, and Paul Kalanithi describes this so well. Abraham Verghese speaks in the foreword of how he had met Paul in person several times before his death, but it was not until he read his book that he felt he really knew him. I too, felt like I got to know Paul through this book. He is very open and honest about himself, his sickness, his relationships, and struggles and triumphs throughout the process of dealing with cancer. I find it interesting that Paul did not always think he wanted to be a physician, but rather thought he might be a writer. He may not have realized his full potential as neurosurgeon and professor, but he surely achieved his goal to be a writer. He has left behind a beautiful book that will be read for many years to come. It will be of great interest to those with life-threatening disease, their family members, and really everyone, because we will all be in those shoes at some point. He has also left behind a wonderful gift of himself to his daughter. She will not remember her time with him, but she will be able to know him through this book and well as through the memories that I’m sure his close relations will share with her. Aside from writing and even delving back into neurosurgery residency at one point, he spent the last years of his life following his diagnosis, building closer bonds with his family, and the love there was overflowing. Aside from being an important read for anyone facing a life-threatening illness themselves or loving someone who is, I think it is a very important read for all medical professionals. It puts a face behind a patient, who is clearly able to articulate the thoughts and feelings of being a patient in our medical system. It emphasizes and highlights the importance of the physician-patient relationship. I gave this book 5 stars for it’s thought provoking, beautiful prose, as well as for writing it’s way through a death with utmost dignity. He strengthens his belief systems, forges stronger relationships with family and loved ones, and finds greater meaning in life once he is given this terminal diagnosis. For discussion questions, please visit book-chatter.com

Reflections on “When Breath Becomes air” by Paul Kalanthini By Bob Steele December 25, 2016 I have read many books in my lifetime, likely several thousand, but this is one of the rare ones. It is a profound, beautifully written book that reached out and touched me on many levels. It triggered deep reflection about health and disease, living and dying, wisdom and folly. This is a sad story, a memoir written by a brilliant, young neurosurgeon who loses his fight with lung cancer. And yet I am so glad I read it and hope that my family and friends will do so. Paul Kalanithi deals with death, looking at its many facets, but never in a morbid or clinical way. Paul spent a third of his life in his quest to become a neurosurgeon. The book reflects some of the many lessons learned in that journey. It includes a helpful treatise on doctor-patient relationships that should be required reading for doctors, nurses, and caretakers for people who face terminal cancer/illness diagnosis. There are literally dozens of quotations that I want to share from this remarkable journey of self-growth as he transitioned from doctor to patient. However, I am resigned to citing these few. * * * * * I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. I had started in this career, in part, to pursue death: to grasp it, uncloak it, and see it eye-to-eye, unblinking. Neurosurgery attracted me as much for its intertwining of brain and consciousness as for its intertwining of life and death. Amid the tragedies and failures, I feared I was losing sight of the singular importance of human relationships, not between patients and their families but between doctor and patient. Technical excellence was not enough…. When there's no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon's only tool. In those moments, I acted not, as I most often did, as death's enemy, but as its ambassador. A tureen of tragedy was best allotted by the spoonful. How little do doctors understand the hells through which we put patients. You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving. Doctors, it turns out, need hope, too. And finally for his infant daughter, Cady: When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account for yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing. * * * * * More poignant words, I have yet to read. A sense of sadness fell over me as I reread the book to collect my thoughts and considered how many more lives he could have saved, how many more he could have touched with his new-found sense of empathy and wisdom. But then I realized that through this book he can reach out and touch the lives of so many more than he could have done as one of the best doctors. He has yet much to share and teach. Thank you, Paul.

I re-read this book after having read it some years ago. It was a good book then, but it meant so much more this time. A little over two years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. Although I have no evidence of disease now, Paul’s story takes on a deeper meaning than it did the first time I read it. I recognize the feelings and thoughts from being diagnosed to going through treatments. It was also helpful to read what his wife experienced, because although my husband spoke to me of his feelings, there are some thoughts he never voiced.

A really good read.

5\5 Not a fraction less. As I finished this book tears rolled down both my cheeks. Breathing was hard for the last 40 pages, as I struggle to choke back the conflicting emotions I felt in reading Paul's last words and those his wife Lucy would conclude with. On the one hand I felt heartbroken with sorrow for the fate of this man who would strive so hard to help others live or to ease the agony of those who would die. Yet this book was as heart wrenching as it was beautiful. It was as uplifting as it was sad. This book deeply touched me on an emotional and what some would call a spiritual level. While I am not spiritual, I cannot deny the spirit of this man, who lived, loved, triumphed and accepted his fate with courage and strength, even as cancer weakened him physiologically. Paul died very near my own age. I struggle to find meaning in life, especially as I see others die around me every year. I also grapple with my own impending end which could come any moment, future or present. I began to question everything as I've aged. I fear perhaps I have made the wrong choices in life. I question what it is all for. Being an atheist is a blessing and a curse, for it gives life at times a hollow definition. We live to die. Most of us spend the majority of our lives dying, or declining until our last day. This does not have to be a sad thing though. This book has revealed to me that there is another way in which to die. That is, to live... until death. From the bottom of my heart I am thankful to Paul, for this book, and to Lucy for her epilogue, for her kind words which will touch my own spirit, my core being, until the end. It will forever remind me that our fate may not always be what we want it to be but our lives are what we will make of them. We will all die, some sooner, some later. This is a fact. While we live to die this does not mean we cannot also live to live, to live life appreciatively. While I do not share the expansive and loving family Paul did and while I feel at times vastly alone in this world, I have learned the deep lessons of this book. I have no one to truly comfort me in my sorrows as I grind through life. This book, these words, are my comfort. Alone we embrace, this philosophy and I. I am not dying such as Paul was. I am merely dying as life would naturally have it, as we all are, until something decides to speed this natural process up, like a cancer or some other malignance. I merely suffer the physiological strife that comes with working on a farm in rural Nova Scotia. I toil so others may not. Someone must till the soil, grow the food, harvest from life to give life. Though I often feel I should be doing more. My English degree hangs on a wall, a banner of achievement, yet a reminder of failure. I relate to Paul in that, like him, I want to help others. After all, there is no better feeling than having consoled or counselled another. I have often had the dream of using words to ease the pain of suffering. Paul has awakened me to the fallacy of how I see that piece of paper in the negative. Perhaps I will do no more than I have. Some do nothing. Some live and die, forgotten to the winds of time. The important thing is to understand that life is a treasure. It is a thing to be cherished, this consciousness, this awareness, our ability to think and see and question and comprehend. To compel or be compelled is to live. Whether alone or in the company of loved ones, we should hold dear this thing we call life. Find your happiness where you can. Be it within the pages of a book such as this or in the company of others, seek it and embrace it, for a life lived happily is to truly live. Whether short or long, alone or otherwise, we need not despair the eventuality of our end. Smile, my fellows, for were we not alive, we would not know what it is to live. Thank you Paul. Thank you Lucy. You have both, in death, and life, warmed my heart beyond what other words have elsewhere been able.

If one could caress or lovingly stroke the surface of another's heart then this is the writing in this book. Pain and pleasure live side by side with honor and simplicity. A moving account of a great soul which can in its truth pull the air from your lungs.

Not the easiest read but very well worth it. Makes you think about the meaning of life

Libro bien escrito, del principio hasta el final. Sorprendente la última parte ya que toca la fibra y es muy emotivo.