When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living.

Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?

When there’s no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool.

Those burdens are what make medicine holy and wholly impossible: in taking up another’s cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight.

“Don’t you

think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?” “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn’t about avoiding suffering.