Excerpt
SUMMARY: By age 36, neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi had earned five degrees across various fields and was at the end of a residency at Stanford. Then he was diagnosed with lung cancer, a disease that killed him 22 months later. Facing death, he wrote “When Breath Becomes Air,” a memoir of his search for meaning in his last days. His widow, Lucy Kalanithi, joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the book.
JUDY WOODRUFF(NewsHour): What makes a life worth living? What gives it meaning? And how does that change when the time one has left collapses? These are some of the profound questions taken up in a new memoir by a doctor who suddenly faced his own mortality.
Jeffrey Brown has our newest addition to the "NewsHour Bookshelf."
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): As a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was used to dealing with life-and-death issues. He was, by his own account, a driven man who studied literature and philosophy before turning to medicine, earning five degrees along the way.
He was near completion of a rigorous residency at Stanford when, at age 36, he got a diagnosis of lung cancer.
DR. PAUL KALANITHI, Author, “When Breath Becomes Air”: Five years down the line, I don’t know what I will be doing. I may be dead. I may not be.
JEFFREY BROWN: He would live just 22 months more, and in that time have a child with his wife, Lucy, and write an indelible memoir, “When Breath Becomes Air.”
No comments:
Post a Comment