‘When Breath Becomes Air’ Review

One of the mysteries of life can be falling in love. A song by Julia Fordham brings this point home with the following lyric: “Love moves in mysterious ways. It’s always so surprising when love appears over the horizon.” You don’t know who you will fall in love with, where it will happen or when it will happen.  For Lucy Kalanithi and John Duberstein, fate or a higher power might have had a hand in their falling in love. Lucy is the spouse of Paul Kalanithi, who wrote “When Breath Becomes Air,” a memoir about his unique end-of-life journey from a physician’s perspective. John Duberstein’s wife, Nina Riggs, penned “The Bright Hour,” which chronicles her thoughts about living and dying.  Last month in the Washington Post, a story shared the news that Lucy and John found each other and fell in love after losing their spouses, both best-selling memoirists.

The Infancy of When Breath Becomes Air

when breath becomes airMedicine was not on Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s professional horizon when he went off to college at Stanford University. He wasn’t going to go into the family business of medicine—his father, uncle and older brother were all physicians. In fact, the first sentence of Part I, “In Perfect Health I Begin,” he states: “I knew with certainty that I would never be a doctor.”

Yet Paul was always fascinated by the connection between literature and science. “Literature provided a rich account of human meaning; the brain, then, was the machinery that somehow enabled it.” Graduating with degrees in English literature and human biology, Paul decided to pursue a master’s degree and center his thesis around  the same questions Walt Whitman constantly pondered─understanding “the Physiological-Spiritual Man.”

Upon the completion of his thesis, which was more science than literary criticism, Paul realized that medicine was his calling after all. Becoming a physician would allow him “to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the questions of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.”

Road to Neurosurgery

After completing medical school at Yale University, it was time for Paul to choose a specialty for his residency match. With his ongoing fascination of the mind and how it works, neurosurgery was the perfect fit.

Becoming a neurosurgeon is a long and arduous road; but ultimately for Paul, it was worth it. He believed, “While all doctors treat diseases, neurosurgeons work in the crucible of identity: Every operation on the brain is, by necessity, a manipulation of the substance of ourselves, and every conversation with a patient undergoing brain surgery cannot help but confront this fact.”

The end was almost in sight for Paul. He was down the home stretch as chief resident when he was given the worst news possible: a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer. With one short inhalation and accompanying exhalation, his dream, career and the life he planned with his wife evaporated.

What was hard for Paul was the fact that his identity as a physician no longer mattered. With his diagnosis, he would walk in a patient’s shoes. Paul did win his battle with the diagnosis for some time, to the point, where he returned to complete his residency. Additionally, Lucy and Paul had a daughter, Cady, who arrived on Independence Day in 2014.

Paul was determined to leave a legacy of his words for his daughter. During the last year of his life, he diligently wrote “When Breath Becomes Air.” From his standpoint, words have a longevity that he did not. Paul had one message for his daughter: “…do nor, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied.”

when breath becomes airIn the epilogue for “When Breath Becomes Air,” Lucy states that Paul died on Monday, March 9, 2015, surrounded by his family. As both a physician and patient, Paul confronted death—“examined it, wrestled with it, accepted it.” With this memoir, Lucy believes her husband wanted to help people understand death and face their own mortality. Although his time on earth was short, Paul did manage to live a meaningful life.

Stay tuned for a blog post in two weeks, when we take a closer look at Nina Riggs’ memoir, “The Bright Hour,” about her end-of-life journey.

At Chapters Health System and its affiliates—Good Shepherd Hospice, HPH Hospice and LifePath Hospice, every day is devoted to educating our patients and keeping them in the place they call home. We are dedicated to ensuring that patients, young and old alike, and their families are able to make educated decisions about important healthcare matters. For more information, please call our helpful Chapters Health team at 1.866.204.8611 or send an email to info@chaptershealth.org.

About Phoebe Ochman

Phoebe Ochman, Director of Corporate Communications for Chapters Health System, manages all content and communications for the not-for-profit organization.

Stories of Love

Although love can be in the air any day and at any time, there is a sense of heightened awareness around Valentine’s Day. Stories of love can come in all different shapes and forms: movies, books and songs. The following are some of our favorites even if the ending isn’t necessarily happily ever after.

Movies

  • Casablanca (1942)
  • Love Story (1970)
  • The Way We Were (1973)
  • An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
  • When Harry Met Sally (1989)
  • Ghost (1990)
  • Titanic (1997)
  • Love Actually (2003)
  • Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
  • La La Land (2016)

when breath becomes airBooks

  • Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  • Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  • Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
  • The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
  • The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
  • Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
  • The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

Songs

  • At Last by Etta James
  • It Had to Be You by Harry Connick Jr.
  • I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston
  • When a Man Loves a Woman by Percy Sledge
  • The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack
  • All of Me by John Legend
  • Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper
  • You Are So Beautiful by Joe Cocker
  • I Want to Know What Love Is by Foreigner
  • Endless Love by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross

We would love to find out your favorite love stories, movies and songs. Please share in the comments.

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