When breath becomes Air - A book review

I remember coming across a facebook post in the beginning of 2017, that very briefly stated about a doctor, a very successful one too, who suffered from some form of cancer. At that time I had no idea that it was going to be a best seller or to be available in  any detailed form whatsoever. Fast forward to a couple of months, I was talking to a fellow Book enthusiast, who asked me what did I read recently? I told him it was a book by Kathy Reich's & that I wasn't able to catch up on reading for quite a long time due to my studies . He then asked me if I have read "When breath becomes Air" to which I promptly said no, but  yes, I have seen it quite alot of buzz about it on Bookstagram community; to which he then started briefly telling me the story like a true, passionate good story lover.
 Anyhow, the reason for telling all this was that, I don't normally go for books that have been created a whole lot of hype about, and suddenly everybody starts reading it, irrespective of it being in the genre that they were never interested in reading in their lifetime, but now they will because its being made into a movie or its the new trend to have read that.
After reading it, I was planning to write a review about it some weeks back, but recently something happened which made me put my thoughts on paper, or more accurately this forum . I received the news of the death a friend & acquaintance from college which just shocked me for a minute. I later came to know about her battle with cancer since previous 6 months. (She was an amazing human being who was very soft spoken and always smiling. May Allah bless her & grant her Jannah.)

We hear these real life incidents and it forces us to question , How is this fair? Why does God give people the opportunities and resources for what they thought of their destiny- but was just snatched from them in a blink of an eye. These questions, niggling and prodding in your mind,and  pushing you to look for the answers. 

The book is a biography of Dr Paul Kalanithi,a Neurological resident, in his final year of residency, who was diagnosed with inoperable Lung cancer.

“Over the last six years, I’d examined scores of such scans, on the off chance that some procedure might benefit the patient. But this scan was different: it was my own.

“Weren’t the numbers just the numbers? Had we all just given in to the “hope” that every patient was above average? It occurred to me that my relationship with statistics changed as soon as I became one.”

 In One split moment, he went from the doctor treating innumerable patients, delivering life-altering diagnosis, faces and stories, some remembered and others forgotten, the book states his journey from this point onwards .

“Life had been building potential, potential that would now go unrealized. I had planned to do so much, and I had come so close. I was physically debilitated, my imagined future and my personal identity collapsed, and I faced the same existential quandaries my patients faced. The lung cancer diagnosis was confirmed. My carefully planned and hard-won future no longer existed. Death, so familiar to me in my work, was now paying a personal visit. Here we were, finally face-to-face, and yet nothing about it seemed recognizable. Standing at the crossroads where I should have been able to see and follow the footprints of the countless patients I had treated over the years, I saw instead only a blank, a harsh, vacant, gleaming white desert, as if a sandstorm had erased all trace of familiarity. The” 
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

 He touches a little bit of background of his American father and his Indian mother, who when Paul was 10, moved his 3 kids and wife, and his Cardiology practise, from Bronxville New York, to Arizona,  which was almost an en route gas station in an almost desert to those passing along, his marriage to an internist Lucy and briefly their married life and some related crucial decisions. He talks about his views on life and science, how he came about the decision of choosing Medicine as his career choice,briefly discussed his days at Stanford , and when he chose Medicine as his major, his colleagues from med school. 
His passion for Neurosurgery is also very well discussed in the book. He thought of Neurosurgeons & Neurosurgery as creme de la creme of the field of Medicine. He talks about how a doctor trains not just his mind, but his whole body to lookout for signs and variations which if ignored or dismissed, may prove to be fatal.

“When a patient comes in with a fatal head bleed, that first conversation with a neurosurgeon may forever color how the family remembers the death, from a peaceful letting go (“Maybe it was his time”) to an open sore of regret (“Those doctors didn’t listen! They didn’t even try to save him!”). When there’s no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool.” 

He talked about how after his diagnosis, and after his treatment started, he had to take in consideration his work,opting to work or leave it completely , trapped in between what he wanted to do and what he had to. 

“Neurosurgery is really hard work, and no one would have faulted me for not going back. (People often ask if it is a calling, and my answer is always yes. You can’t see it as a job, because if it’s a job, it’s one of the worst jobs there is.)” 


When Paul & his wife, Lucy were at somehow crossroads considering bringing a new life into this world, he talks about how it was what they had always wanted, but in the recent turn of events, his wife was somewhat unsure if it was a good idea.

“Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?” “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn’t about avoiding suffering. ”

About life-altering decisions

“At those critical junctures, the question is not simply whether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living. Would you trade your ability—or your mother’s—to talk for a few extra months of mute life? The expansion of your visual blind spot in exchange for eliminating the small possibility of a fatal brain hemorrhage? Your right hand’s function to stop seizures? How much neurologic suffering would you let your child endure before saying that death is preferable? Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

When talking about when and why he decided to write the book 

“Dying in one’s fourth decade is unusual now, but dying is not. “The thing about lung cancer is that it’s not exotic,” Paul wrote in an email to his best friend, Robin. “The reader can get into these shoes, walk a bit, and say, ‘So that’s what it looks like from here. Sooner or later, I’ll be back here in my own shoes.’ That’s what I’m aiming for, I think. Not the sensationalism of dying and not the exhortations to gather rosebuds but: Here’s what lies up ahead on the road.” Of course, he did more than just describe the terrain. He traversed it bravely.” 
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

We are always in this constant improvising and planning mode, sometimes making decisions on the go, having certain perspectives and beliefs about life and hope and passion, and the imminent death. Some of us, prefer science to co relate, and a few others think about how science and religion are two very separate entities ; Dr Paul's perspective regarding this are well discussed throughout the book.
It had moments where you read the lines and maybe amongst them too, and you had to stop for a while to process. like when he says

“Even working on the dead, with their faces covered, their names a mystery, you find that their humanity pops up at you--in opening my cadaver's stomach, I found two undigested morphine pills, meaning that he had died in pain, perhaps alone and fumbling with the cap of a pill bottle.” 

I personally have never read a biography before, but this was written in a very brief but detailed story like manner. I think that people from different stages and fields of life, can relate to the book in some manner and extent, there are always common threads that interlinks humans who might not seem to have anything in common at the first glance.