Inspiring, perfectly observed memories find hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable adversity as an idealistic young neurosurgeon tries to answer the question: what makes life worth living? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing ten years of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying and the next he was a patient fighting for life. And just like that, the future he and his wife had envisioned evaporated. The book chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes for a virtuous and meaningful life" to a neurosurgeon at Stanford University, and finally to a patient and father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, which is no longer a ladder leading to your goals in life, flattens out into an eternal present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life when another is dying? These are some of the questions Kalanithi grapples with in this deeply moving memoir.
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Paul Kalanithi passed away in March 2015. While working on this book, but his words are still a living guide and gift to all.