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When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi

6/2/2016

7 Comments

 
Picture
"I needed words to go forward. And so it was literature that brought me back to life during this time."
Diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, Paul Kalanithi—a remarkably skilled young doctor—is forced to put the following question under the microscope in When Breath Becomes Air: "What makes a life worth living?"
Having graduated from Stanford university with a Master's in English before becoming a neurosurgeon, Kalanithi mindfully accepts that he must trade in his scalpel for a pen once he is given his inauspicious prognosis. His writing, which he planned to do after retirement, can't wait.
Paul poignantly presages at one point that "words have a longevity I do not." This is woefully illustrated when Lucy, Paul's recent widow, must write the book's epilogue (enter handkerchief here). To honour this immortal and talented writer, here are just a few sentences that I especially cherished. I hope they will give you pause, too:
  • ​She was a harbinger of the sub rosa, the new world awaiting me in just a few weeks.
  • One afternoon, I woke from my nap, looked up, and saw vultures circling, mistaking me for carrion.
  • You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.
  • ...broke into Memorial Church at midnight to lie on our backs and listen to our voices echo in the apse; and so on.
  • Everything teeters between pathos and bathos: here you are, violating society's most fundamental taboos, and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito.
  • Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder wherein one loses the ability to see faces.
  • Burke, which the OED defines as "to kill secretly by suffocation or strangulation, or for the purpose of selling the victim's body for dissection."
  • I was compelled by neurosurgery, with its unforgiving call to perfection; like the ancient Greek concept arete...
  • The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, and the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt.
  • The tumor had interrupted his speech circuitry, so he could speak only in streams of numbers, but he still had prosody, he could still emote: smile, scowl, sigh. 
  • You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.
  • I stroked Paul's hair, whispering, "You're a brave Paladin"—my nickname for him...
7 Comments
David Tovell, CPA, CGA, CIA link
6/21/2017 04:41:42 pm

Sheryl, I also write aphorisms and here is one for you: 'What is cannot be saved... for under the universal laws of physics it must become what was ! ' #tovellisms David Tovell

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abdelazeezsobh link
6/24/2020 05:25:08 pm

<a href="https://www.toevolution.com/file/view/536475/when-breath-becomes-air-book-by-paul-kalanithi-pdf-quotes-summary-review-online-reading-download">When Breath Becomes Air </a> is a powerful look at a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer through the eyes of a neurosurgeon. When Paul Kalanithi receives his diagnosis, he is forced to see this disease and the process of getting sick, as a patient rather than a doctor: the result of his experience is not just a look at what life is and how a scientific perspective works, but the ins and outs of what makes life matter. This heartbreaking book will capture you from page one and still have you thinking long after the closing sentence.

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    Title—When Breath Becomes Air

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