Abraham Verghese

Paul Kalanithi

When Breath Becomes Air

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity – the brain – and finally into a patient and a new father. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away? Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

🫶🏽

He had reached some compromise in his mind that fatherhood could be distilled; short, concentrated (but sincere) bursts of high intensity could equal…whatever it was that other fathers did. All I knew was, if that was the price of medicine, it was simply too high.

And with that, the future I had imagined, the one just about to be realized, the culmination of decades of striving, evaporated.

Amelia Hruby

You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.

Before operating on a patient's brain, I realized. I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values. what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end. The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, and the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt. Those burdens are what make medicine holy and wholly impossible: in taking up another's cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight.

camille leung

It never occurred to me that you could love someone the same way after he was gone

Cassandra Tang

I had met her in a space where she was a person, instead of a problem to be solved.

Still, when you work in a hospital, the papers you file aren't just papers: they are fragments of narratives filled with risks and triumphs.

They see people at their most vulnerable, their post scared, and their most private. They escort them into the world, and then back out. 

Indeed, the version of Paul I miss most, more than ever robust, dazzling version with whom I first fell in love with, is the beautiful, focused man he was in his last year, the Paul who wrote this book—frail but never weak.

Lying next to Lucy in the hospital bed, both of us crying, the CT scan images still glowing on the computer screen, that identity as a physician—my identity—no longer mattered.

As a chief resident, nearly all responsibility fell on my shoulders, and the opportunities to succeed—or fail—were greater than ever. The pain of failure had led me to understand that technical excellence was a moral requirement. Good intentions were not enough, not when so much depended on my skills, when the difference between tragedy and triumph was defined by one or two millimeters.

bree ♡̷̷̷

“can you breathe okay with my head on your chest like this?” his answer was “it’s the only way i know how to breathe.” 

knowing that even if i’m dying, until i actually die, i am still living. 

you can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving  

casey

If the weight of mortality does not grow lighter, does it at least get more familiar?

"Don't you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death 

Even if you are perfect, the world isn't.

Kamu Pancholi

There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.

Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.

At home in bed a few weeks before he died, I asked him, “Can you breathe okay with my head on your chest like this?” His answer was “It’s the only way I know how to breathe.”

“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. This is the story of Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student in search of what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father.

Sofia Kopkášová

In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them, where, as at the end of that Sunday's reading, the sower and reaper can rejoice together.

A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title.

Syrina

Knowing that even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living 

A beautifully touching book, written as only a gifted author, dying, could.

Fred Rivett

Contemplative, written beautifully reflecting Paul's appreciation for literature and deep thought. 

book’s so TOP TOP that i desire to read it once a month 

Beautifully written. While reading, I felt like I have a deep connection with the family. I was with them going through it all.

Tina Villarete

this book left me feeling hollow (in a good way)

This was an amazing book. I have felt everything from sorrow to joy. I do not think any other book has made me think this much. I do not have the words to correctly describe the feeling this book gives me. Truly a masterpiece.

Emily Burns

When I finished the final page of this book, I felt both broken and full. That is what grief, in all of its complexities, feels like to me. I mourn for all the world has lost in losing this man. A friend of mine said it best: this book is a gift.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir 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, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Elisavet Rozaki 

Monicap

finished this the third time and i know, for sure, there will be a fourth, a fifth, a sixth time, and so many more of it. 

Son Nefes Havaya Karismadan

Ubeyd Gencer

“Bu kitap sayesinde, Paul Kalanithi’yi hiç tanımayanlar bile ölümünün yasını tutacak;hayat hikayesinden herkes faydalanacak.Hepinize,her birinize tavsiye ederim.”-Ann Patchett

Isabella 

This book is so raw and beautiful. It was a short book, but it was very remarkable. I deeply admire Paul for his unwavering passion. It was so well-written that it tugged my heartstrings.

i couldn't put it down. i finished reading it in a day in a half (granted it's not particularly long). it's...sad, i suppose, but it wasn't the kind of sad in which you sit there wanting to cry for five hours because of how it'd ended. it was the kind of sad that dwells quietly, the one that makes you think about your life, the people you love, the people that don't have much of either.

Deepika Ramesh

This heartbreaking memoir is powerful. My blog: http://worncorners.com/2016/03/22/whe...

Althea Trixie

** spoiler alert **
           This is the first book that I finished - and actually enjoyed - this year, despite the content of the memoir. I heard bits of opinions about this book, but I never really paid attention because it didn't really sparked my interest. All it did was solidify a surface level opinion - wich was "Oh, it's a story about a doctor". Little did I know that I was gonna be shedding tears over this book at 10pm in my pajamas. 

For a memoir, this is considerably short. If I wasn't procrastinating, I think it would only take me 4 hours max to finish it. This book was straight to the point, while providing emotional substance to the storyline. This was written by Paul, and was later finished by his wife, Lucy, because sadly Paul passed away at the age of 36.

I think this just hits too close to home, because I'm a medical student as well. And most of the diagnosis or anything medical related, I cold understand pretty quickly. It also made me realize how incredibly HARD it is to pursue neurosurgery, or any medical profession outside my 4 year course in nursing school. He relayed the picture of a neurosurgeon perfectly, even while battling his disease. 

It made my chest physically ache, to think how his life could've played out if he didn't get cancer. I am incredibly saddened to know how he never truly tapped his full potential with his residency, and his shortlived fatherhood to his now 8-year-old daughter.

Idk.

This book just made me realize how serious medical school is. How entering this field can alter the entirety of your life, the majority of your life. And I'm one of the people who made this joice, to enter this field and I wanna have the passion and grit that Paul once had. I wanna see the world through his perspective. I wanna have his drive to strive for something great each day.

I always considered - in the back of my head - to pursue neuroscience. To be a neurosurgeon. But as I finished the book and saw how many things you have to sacrifice to be a neurosurgeon - it scared me.

One of the few things I've picked up from the book is, you need to love medicine - your job, or else it's just isn't worth it. And I agree. I always looked at my career as something that I HAVE to do, but that will inevitably ruin me in the long run. And I don't know if I still have a strong will to recover after that. 

Who knows?

Anyways, to sum this all up, When Breath Becomes Air made an impact in my life and probably the choices I'm gonna make in my medicine field life.

You were great, Paul.

Thank you for inspiring me.

Was macht das eigene Leben lebenswert? Was tun, wenn die Lebensleiter keine weiteren Stufen in eine vielversprechende Zukunft bereithält? Was bedeutet es, ein Kind zu bekommen, neues Leben entstehen zu sehen, während das eigene zu Ende geht? Bewegend und mit feiner Beobachtungsgabe schildert der junge Arzt und Neurochirurg Paul Kalanithi seine Gedanken über die ganz großen Fragen.

source: https://www.randomhouse.de/Buch/Bevor-ich-jetzt-gehe/Paul-Kalanithi/Knaus/e485966.rhd

Was am Ende wirklich zählt - Das Vermächtnis eines jungen Arztes

Bevor ich jetzt gehe

Laura K

Ciel Zero

[ BOOK IG: @clumsyciel ]

overall rating: 5/5 ⭐️
time taken to read: ~2 days
number of sticky tabs: 20

"You can't ever reach perfection, but you believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving." (page 115) 

WBBA is a memoir by Dr. Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon that is diagnosed with lung cancer on his last year of residency. all of his dreams and plans for the future are shattered, and he learns how to live meaningfully while he is still on the road of acceptance for this new path in his life. 

first and foremost, i just need to announce that i cried a lot over this book. Dr. Kalanithi's writing is so mesmerising; all of his raw emotions are written eloquently across a page. perhaps that was a weird way of phrasing it, but that was how the book felt.

in the foreword by Dr. Abraham Verghese, he describes Dr. Kalanithi's funeral as 'i saw faces looking calm, smiling, as if they had witnessed something profoundly beautiful' (page xx).
i find this part in particular; incredibly beautiful. funerals, as sad as the occasion is, it is a celebration of how one lived. each and every life is meaningful, no matter what one has done during their time of living. everyone has been put here for a purpose. it so happens that Dr. Kalanithi has found his; to become a neurosurgeon to save people, a father to his daughter, and to inspire others through his writing. 

this book has made me realise that even through death, life is always worth living for.

I'm so glad that I persisted on reading this book. I cannot articulate my words right now as I am ugly crying. But, one thing is for sure, Paul achieved in publishing a book that enlightens and (will) help people in confronting death. 

A truly great book written by a great man.

Cece Page

I do not often cry during books or memoirs but this one got me. Read it in 24 hours. A really beautiful narrative of the dying and grieving process. Just loved it.

Ann Gabrielle

Found this book while scrolling through my page-shelf from the recommendarion of another memoir.. and I might say, it is one of the quite-hard-to-understand book I read to so far. It is a book about Paul Kalanithi, a doctor who have been suffering for lung cancer. He is a brave and always striving for exellence for the rest of his life. While struggling with this disease, he was looking for the worth-meaning of life, with his surroundings, his family, and pour those by words to write this book. He was died while working in this book that make this story more emotional.. "I wish I lived longer so my children have more memories about me." 

This book has many unfamiliar words that probably need you to learn more vocabularies afterwards.. Or more likely, you need to pay attention of new phrases or related content about this book. Not forget to mention this book is quite.. short? But full of learning in the span of two hundreds pages memoir of someone's life. Something memorable about this book that I highlighted are; five stage of gried all backward, maybe life is merely an “instant,” too brief to consider, but he can merge the focus would have to be on my imminent role, intimately involved with the when and how of death—the grave digger inside it.

When Breath Becomes Air is a book that you need for always striving, counting each every blessing of what mother earth give to you. This book won't tell you about what to do,  but guiding you to several options to get through it. The entire human knowledge that came cross all the same never contained in one person, it grows from the relationship they collide between each other, yet, it will never complete. 

"The hand of the lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of it and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones. It caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many dried in the open valley. son of man, can these bones live?"

Laurianne

Wow... that was a lot to take in. All I want to say is I respect and admire Paul so much for his bravery while facing death. An excellent book to welcome August.

jess

okay stop. Cue. This book makes me cry in public. This book, completely overwhelm me, how I was alike Paul in sense of interests, loving literature but at the same time going on a science path, where it contradicts, and having the interest of being a neurosurgeon. How Paul had it all, I will undoubtly can't feel the same as him. I'd felt the real pessimism and the relentless depression over me, meanwhile Paul faced it with absolute positivity and having those certain period of time perceived as joyful times. 
"You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving." 
Superb. This book has taught me a lot in which I can't put it in words well. 5 stars out of 5.

When Breath Becomes Air

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