When Breath Becomes Air.

☆☆☆☆☆

when breath becomes air.
paul kalanithi.

Publisher  Random House.

Publication Date:January 19,2016.

Genre: Non-Fiction| Medical.

Format|Pages: EBooks|208.

 Source:  Goodreads|Library. 

 CONTAINS SPOILERS

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. 

 ✎

Moving. Inspiring. Heartbreaking.


I have heard about this memoir, WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR for some time, and finally had a chance to check it out at the library. Oh man, I do not think I even have words for this book; I am still going through emotions. From all the memoirs, I read the years, WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR is one of the most touching, tragic ones that I have read. I cannot even begin to imagine what Paul must been going through his diagnosis, and I felt as if he handled better than I would have. All the emotions in the book, during the surgeries, how he felt during the diagnoses, and during the treatment. Despite that it was not happening to me, all those vivid d descriptions that he wrote of his thoughts, It made me feel as if I were. I had a strong feeling as I was there, along with him, and feeling everything that he was. WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR is one of most emotional books, it will have you crying more than once. It can be a hard book to read, but it is worth every single page.



It is one thing being a patient. Nevertheless, to turn from doctor to patient, I feel as if that is even harder. I loved the fact that it was written in two parts; I enjoyed reading how he decided to be neurosurgeon and how he described the patients he treated. He used quite a few medical terms, and since I am taking medical terminology were very familiar to me, making me realize how much I learned. I always loved medical-based books and just medicine in general. WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR made me realize why, because like Paul, I want to help others, and it why I am going into the medical field even if it is a bit different. This book was so well written; everything was so descriptive and written with so much emotion. Even though cancer is a hard subject to write about, to read, you will find yourself falling in love with the book.



That ending, it seemed that it got me the most from the entire book. Once I reached the last page, I found myself thinking about it for some time. WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR is a book that will break your heart into a piece, and the book that will stay with you. There is part of me that wonders what happened to his wife afterward, if she moved on, remarried—an incredible, compelling book that deserves so much more than five stars.