When breath becomes air by Paul kalanithi

When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi is a moving memoir where the author recounts his experience as a neurosurgeon and later as a patient who was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer.

The book is rich with his experiences of treating patients with Brain tumour and about his zest to find the meaning of life and death. He also talks about his passion for literature and his investment in books seeking answers for the same. He writes :

"Neurosurgery attracted me as much for its intertwining of brain and consciousness as for its intertwining of life and death. I had thought that a life spent in the space between the two would grant me not merely a stage for compassionate action but an elevation of my own being: getting as far away from petty materialism, from self- important trivia, getting right there, to the heart of the matter, to truly life and death decisions and struggles... surely a kind of transcendence would be found there?"

He held so much passion, that for him, the profession of a neurosurgeon was a calling. It wasn't a job. Precision is important, knowing how far you must go and measuring the steps with your scalpel inside a brain is a question of life and death for your patient.Everything inside our brains are wired with such sanctity that working around it demands excellence. He writes ," You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving."

He talks time and again about the 'humane' aspect of his job which was the most difficult to deal with. He says he took lessons from his father on how to communicate with patients. I was surprised to read this, because I didn't know that this held any importance because I have felt that the hospital care these days is vastly impersonal and facetious. Atleast that is how it appears to me. Clearly, Dr.kalanithi was a combination of technical adeptness and earnestness. I wish there were more people like him.

The later part of the book was a painful read as he turns patient. He tries to find probability in the face of mortality. Because how many more years ?, is a question to which no surgeon can give a definitive answer. A doomed life hangs in the air, suspended by a timeless chord where you don't seem to know how to begin.

That is when we get to witness the extraordinary courage of this young man who was just 36 years old.

Though he breathed his last, his life starting as a child who read 1984 even before he was 10 years old, pans out and is relived in the minds of scores of readers who read this book. In the air, in the life sustaining space, Dr.Paul Kalanithi and his story shall live forever.