When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Paul Kalanithi was mostly through his residency as a neural surgeon when he discovered that he had late stage lung cancer.  His diagnosis made him look closely at his life and try to decide how to go forward and what was most important to him knowing that his life span would be much shorter than he had originally thought.  

I remember when this was published in 2016, that it received a lot of attention and a lot of play in the book club circles.  All of the awards and accolades are well deserved. Even though this book was written in the last 18 months of Kalanithi's life, after he had become too sick to work anymore, it is still very inspirational and full of hope.  Kalanithi talks about how he as always been fascinated a with the question of what makes life have meaning and what is the role of death in life.  The book talks about the struggles a surgeon has when he basically takes another person's life in his hands each time he operates.  He talks about the heart break when you lose a patient, and how easy it is to wonder if you could have done more.  He also talks about all the difficult questions he had to wrestle with when he switched from being the doctor to being the patient. It was a very honest, yet hope filled read that I will be recommending to people all the time going forward.  (228 p.)