Sitting in the hospital during neurosurgical residency, Dr. Paul Kalanithi was faced with the heartbreaking and immediate challenge of identifying and pushing through his own terrible disease: lung cancer. This novel, When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, explores the author’s journey when facing death and beautifully portrays the difficulties and accomplishments throughout his life. This novel brought many feelings to me and hit home within many parts of his story through his incredible writing and attention to including details.
In the prologue, the author begins his book through his description of flipping through his own CT scan images and seeing his full-blown cancer, which had developed in his lungs into “inoperable tumors, the spine deformed, a full lobe of the liver obliterated. Cancer, widely
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I thought this passage was interesting when reading it because us too, as humans, don’t consider the complexity of the human brain enough. A brain holds memories, thoughts, and opinions, and is the greatest storage center in the world. This passage really made me think, and while it is just a description of his career and the hardships, I thought it was very powerful in shining light on the “sacredness” of the human body and soul and how important and complex we are as humans. I was very inspired by this entire passage, and just as the rest of the book, it made me think a lot about the treatment of patients and how each person has a body, and everybody has a soul, and deserves to be treated as that. I have always taught that patients are people, and although treating them medically is a part of your work, you should still treat them as humans, not a case or patient number. Dr. Kalanithi touches on that perfectly, and I could relate to that passage