TOW #13: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

            Finishing the second half of When Breath Becomes Air was like completing a large project. I didn’t know what to spend my time with now. This book had consumed majority of my time although every minute that I invested was worth it. Kalanithi’s ability to display his most intimate and personal emotions into the pages was viewed highly by not only myself but also by many in the reading community. As he is a doctor, he is exposed to countless of individuals with similar cases as his. His exclusive perspective into the doctor who slowly degrades into a weak patient was an extremely intriguing foundation of his memoir.

            Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon who, due to his sudden diagnosis of lung cancer towards the end of his seven-year residency, began to shift into the position of a patient whom he had treated all his life. With this disease, he began to see his gradual transition from “doctor to patient, from actor to acted upon, from subject to direct object” (Kalanithi 180). He recalls his experience as a medical student, knowing nothing and often end up asking patients to explain their disease and treatments to him, but as he grew more experienced as a doctor, he never expected patients to make decisions themselves since he bore responsibility for the patient. And through his sickening body, he only now realized that he “was trying to do the same thing now, [his] doctor-self remaining responsible for [his] patient-self” (Kalanithi 182-183). His various viewpoints in the perspective of various roles that he played in the course of his lifetime aided in a book with a great amount of substance, giving a peek into the scenarios he found himself in. When he was taken off a drug that he shouldn’t have been, he consulted a young medical student about it. However, the inexperienced student began arguing with him, as he “could see that in Brad’s eyes I was not a patient, I was a problem: a box to be checked off” (Kalanithi 187). This is a specific example in which he got an insight into the minds of his fellow hospital mates and how they treat their patients as they got more and more experienced. Giving these various perspectives allowed Kalanithi to appeal to his audience, giving insight into the medical world that many do not know.