"Like my own patients, I had to face my mortality and try to understand what made my life worth living---and I needed Emma's help to do so. Torn between being a doctor and being a patient, delving into medical science and turning back to literature for answers, I struggled, while facing my own death, to rebuild my old life---or perhaps find a new one."
-Paul Kalanithi
I believe this book was recommended to me by a friend some time ago and I had seen it on the Best Seller list for many weeks so I requested it from the library. When it arrived I put it off in favor of others in my book queue. When I saw that it was on hold and could not be renewed, I began reading and finished in a day and a half. I was hooked by the Foreword by Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone, one of our book club selections years ago. His impressions of Paul Kalanithi, the author of When Breath Becomes Air, were so beautiful I just had to keep reading.
This memoir by a gifted neurosurgeon/neuroscientist was the most powerful book I have read in ages! Just over 200 pages contain the story of an amazing and brilliant doctor with a terminal cancer diagnosis and his poignant advice for living and dying. It reminded me so much of The Last Lecture, a memoir written by Carnegie Mellon University professor and computer guru Randy Pausch who also died of cancer. Both are beautifully written, very inspiring and could appropriately be represented by Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young."
I found this book to be a page-turner even with its medical jargon way above my head. My rating is definitely a 5! Although it was very sad that Kalanithi's life was cut short (he was only in his mid-30's) he left an amazing legacy through the patients he helped and the writing of this book to share his journey as physician and patient as he confronted what was most important in life.
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