When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi-Book Review

I began reading this book on an airplane traveling to a much needed and anticipated vacation in Aruba. I am not sure this is the right time for most people to read this book, and yet it had been on my to read list for too long. I had recommended it to a hospice patient who wanted to read a book about dying written by someone who was actually dying. I told her when I recommended the book that I had not yet read it. In her memory, I wanted to read this book so I knew if it was something to recommend to someone else. And so I began reading it on a cold morning after leaving the airport in Baltimore. I took a break from reading to look out the window and saw the sun shining, blue waters, and islands of the Bahamas. While I had been reading, I had been transported to another place.

This book will transport you into Paul’s life. When reading these words, I felt like I was there with him in the desert in Arizona, in medical school with a donor (the kinder term for cadavers), in the hospitals and Operating Rooms. And then you go with Paul from his work as a surgeon to his life as a patient looking for meaning in the time he has left. The books ends with an epilogue written by Paul’s wife after his death.

I read this book quickly even as I recognized that it covers the difficult topic of one’s own mortality. I cried on the beach as I read the epilogue even though it was stated from early on that Paul was going to die. And I thought about my hospice patient who I would (now) recommend she start this book from Part 2-Cease Not till Death. My patient didn’t need to hear about his life before the diagnosis. She wanted to hear from someone else who had walked the journey toward death and stopped to share his or her own story. She did not want to read about all that one was giving up with a terminal diagnosis because she was living that herself. If I had read this book before she died, I would have encouraged her to read the epilogue because it talks about Paul’s last days and how he is surrounded by those he loved.

I do recommend this book for anyone who wants to ponder what it feels like to die young and to know you are going to die sooner rather than later.
This is a book for people who love poetry and literature and autobiographies.

I am still searching for a book to recommend to my hospice patients that is written by someone who is dying and who speaks in easy to understand terms about how their diagnosis and living their last days affects them.