Book - When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air  

 by Paul Kalanithi

"... a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015..."  image & summary from worldcat.org

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“I hadn’t expected the prospect of facing my own mortality to be so disorienting, so dislocating.” (163) 

       

“As furiously as I had tried to resist it, I realized that cancer had changed the calculus. For the last several months, I had striven with every ounce to restore my life to its precancer trajectory, trying to deny cancer any purchase on my life. As desperately as I now wanted to feel triumphant, instead I felt the claws of the crab holding me back. The curse of cancer created a strange and strained existence, challenging me to be neither blind to, nor bound by, death’s approach. Even when the cancer was in retreat, it cast long shadows.” (176)

Epilogue written by Paul’s wife Lucy Kalanithi

“… we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love – to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful. A few months after his diagnosis, we sang the hymn “The Servant Song” while standing side by side in a church pew, and the words vibrated with meaning as we faced uncertainty and pain together: ‘I will share your joy and sorrow / Till we’ve seen this journey through.’” (228) 
        jht – My sister sent this hymn to me a few months ago – beautiful words. Read about it here. 

 “What happened to Paul was tragic, but he was not a tragedy.” (234)

        jht – so very, very true. This is a very important distinction. 

C.S. Lewis “Bereavement is not the truncation of married love, but one of its regular phases – like the honeymoon. What we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through that phase too.” (235)

        jht – It's all part of the journey, especially when that journey and marriage are eternal and continue on the other side of the veil. 

Talking about being surrounded by family & friends at the end – “And yet we did feel lucky, grateful – for family, for community, for opportunity, for our daughter, for having risen to meet each others at a time when absolute trust and acceptance were required. Although these last few years have been wrenching and difficult – sometimes almost impossible – they have also been the most beautiful and profound of my life, requiring the daily act of holding life and death, joy and pain in balance and exploring new depths of gratitude and love. … Relying on his own strength and the support of his family and community, Paul faced each stage of his illness with grace – not with bravado or a misguided faith that he would “overcome” or “beat” cancer but with an authenticity that allowed him to grieve the loss of the future he had planned and forge a new one.” (230 )

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New York Times interview with author's wife Lucy