terminal illness

When Breath Becomes Air

By Paul Kalanithi
Star Rating
★★★★★

Rated by Colleen O.
Apr 12, 2016

How do I begin discussing this book? It’s breathtaking, painful, haunting, and beautiful all at the same time. Paul Kalanithi attended Stanford and Yale to become a doctor trained in neurological surgery and neuroscience, all in the hopes of gaining an understanding of death, and choosing a much more difficult path to be able to treat the dying. As he’s just beginning his career and getting incredible job offers throughout the country, he is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at thirty-six years of age. He then begins to process death in a much more personal way, switching from a lifesaving