Book #10: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

I read about this a few months ago, but forgot about it. It sounded vaguely familiar--it's a memoir by Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who discovered that he himself had cancer, and suddenly had to face all of his own questions about the meaning of life and death that he had been helping his patients to navigate through his training. He was in his last year of his residency when he was diagnosed, so he never fully finished his training, and he had a lot of questions about what he wanted to do out of his life and how he should spend his time after knowing about his cancer. I thought that his writing style was beautiful and very poetic--he was an English major and had a master's in English before going to medical school, and he spent a lot of time reading literature, which you can tell through his writing style--and I loved how he clearly spent a lot of time thinking about his responsibility as a communicator to his patients, not just as a quick and skillful surgeon. His view of the morality of being a doctor and talking to patients about their diagnoses and procedures makes me hope that all doctors feel that same way--overcoming the dulling of their senses that must eventually come when dealing with hundreds or thousands of patients over years, trying to be sensitive to their questions and fears and needs. I loved how he was so open and honest about his struggles and attempts to live a meaningful life, not just thinking "I'll beat this cancer!" but "How can I live meaningfully even knowing I might die from this cancer?" The most poignant part of his story was that he and his wife had a baby a few months before his cancer came back and he eventually passed away. She was only eight months old when he died--and I am so sensitive to things about babies right now. I cried my way through reading the epilogue, written after he died, by his wife, about how he passed away and what they have learned and done since then. But it was a very well-earned cry. This book was not very long--it went by quickly--but it felt deep and meaningful and inspiring. The best kind of read.