‘When Breath Becomes Air’ is an exceptional book, written by Paul Kalanithi. The author takes us on a phenomenally sensitive journey, describing his days from childhood to the final days before his death by lung cancer. Paul was a true polymath, who even in his brief life, received noteworthy recognition for his research and studies as a scholar, a surgeon, a scientist and now - posthumously - as a writer. This memoir is a narrative of the trials that occur in both Paul’s stellar career and his refusal to give in to the illness which ultimately consumed him. Essentially, there's not much of a feat other than indefatigable resilience and a sincerity that endures long after the last word appears in this book which has many important things to tell us, about meaning in life when confronted with imminent mortality. …show more content…
He studied English Literature and human biology which earned him a double Bachelor of Arts after which he went on to earn Masters degrees in both philosophy and the history of medicine. Paul started contemplating the meaning of life and realized that he needed to practice medicine to understand the human brain. He went on to Yale to pursue his doctoral degree from the School of Medicine. He then went to UCSF to his residency and post-doctoral study in neuroscience, which is the study of the human brain. In Paul’s own words, “literature provides the best account of the mind, and neuroscience lays down the most elegant rules of the brain.” He met Lucy, who would later become his wife, in medical school at Yale whom he was drawn to immediately as he observed how empathetic she
On the topic of Atul Gawande’s novel Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, an ongoing issue has brought into question what we should do with the elderly and ill that are in need of care. On the one hand, some argue that they should be put in nursing homes and seek treatment for their problems because they can no longer take care of themselves. From this perspective, the elderly have a greater chance of getting injured if they are not taken care of properly, thus are seen as unfit to live on their own. On the other hand, however, others argue that the elderly should be allowed to live on their own as long as they maintain a healthy lifestyle. Atul Gawande, one of this view’s main proponents, urges us to realize that no one is immortal
The Dying of the Light is an article by Dr. Craig Bowron that captures the controversy surrounding the role of medication in prolonging life. The author describes that many medical advancements have become a burden to particularly elderly patients who in most instances are ready to embrace the reality of death. Dr. Bowron believes that dying in these modern times has become a tiring and unnatural process. “Everyone wants to grow old and die in his or her sleep, but the truth is most of us will die in pieces,” Bowron notes (Bowron). The article does not advocate for euthanasia or the management of health care costs due to terminal or chronic illness. Bowron faults humanity for not embracing life and death with dignity as it was in the past. He blames the emergence of modern medical advances and democracy as the sole reason why everyone is pursuing immortality or prolonging of life rather than embracing the natural course of things. The article is very articulate and comes out rather persuasive to its target audience that happens to be health-conscious. Craig Bowron uses effective rhetorical strategies such as logos, ethos, and pathos to pass on his message. The article’s credibility is impeccable due to the author’s authority in health matters as he is a hospital-based internist. A better placed individual to dissect this issue by analyzing his experiences in the healthcare profession. The article incorporates a passionate delivery that appeals to the readers’ hopes, opinions, and imagination.
Gaines, Ernest J. A Lesson Before Dying. N.p.: Vintage, 1994. Open Library. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.
Williams, B. (1973). The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality. B. Williams, Problems of the Self. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
In his encounter with a young boy, Lee Tran, who suffered from a tumor compressing his airway which obstructed his ability to breathe, Gawande discusses the sheer luck that resulted in Lee’s “tumor [shifting] rightward, [allowing] airways to both lungs to open up,” as the conflicted doctors did not pursue the safest course of treatment (Gawande 6). This anecdote validates the fact that often doctors cannot foresee the optimal course of action through the smoke of crisis and relied on essentially random chance to save the young boy’s life. Gawande sums up this experience as he admits that while there is science in the profession, there also exists “habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing” (Gawande 7) - rendering the science imperfect. These qualities - habit, intuition, and “plain old guessing” are not empirical qualities proven through the scientific method but rather unquantifiable, refuting the stereotypes conferred by the myth of an infallible science and revealing the medicine is ultimately a human
Virtually all scholars accept the Apostle Paul as the author of Philemon. Paul, who was formally called Saul prior to his work as an Apostle, was born in the city of Tarsus, the Capital of ancient Cilicia. Tarsus was declared a free city by Rome, thus making Paul a Roman citizen. He was Jewish by blood from the tribe of Benjamin. Paul studied under the teaching and influence of the rabbi Gamaliel and became a Pharisee. As a Pharisee, Paul possessed a rigid adherence to the letter of the law and strongly opposed and fought against Christianity. Paul was converted to Christianity by Jesus on a persecution journey to Damascus in AD 33. After his conversion, Paul became a missionary to the Gentile world. He is believed to have written at least thirteen books of the New Testament before his death in AD 67-68.
Joshua Nealy, a prominent medical school graduate, died last night from complications of losing his dream of becoming a practicing physician. He was 39 years-old. Soft-spoken and borderline obsessive, Joshua never looked the part of a “professional”, but, in the final days of his life, he revealed an unknown side of his psyche. This hidden quasi-Jungian persona surfaced during the last three years of pursuit of his long reputed dream profession, a position, which he spent nearly 10 years attaining. Sadly, the protracted search ended this past March 18th in complete and utter failure. Although in certain defeat, the courageous Nealy secretly clung to the belief that life is merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences. It’s not a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan. Asked about the loss of her dear friend, Emily, the girlfriend turned fiancé and dPT expert of Berkshire County, described Joshua as a changed man in the last years of his life. "Things were worse for him; not following his dream left him mostly lifeless, uninspired," Sammons noted. Ultimately, Joshua concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess the powerful ability to change ourselves and the world around us; the choice to make ours from nothingness.
Life and death represent a dyad; their definitions inherently depend on one another. Simply defined, death is the cessation of life. Similarly, life can be defined as not death; however, not everything not alive is dead. Boniolo and Di Fiore explain this dyadic relationship well, and other authors have cited this interdependency to better define life and death.1-6 The academic literature contains multiple definitions for both terms depending on which discipline or interest group attempts the definition. Nair-Collins provides a thorough discourse on this diversity in terms of death, differentiating between “biological death, death of the person, death of the moral agent, death of the moral patient, legal death, and the commonsense notion of death.”2(p.667,668,675) Through the dyadic relationship, similar groupings could be arrived at for defining life. Whether or not one accepts Nair-Collins’ categories, at least some differentiation of this type is necessary given the complexity of these concepts. I propose a simplified categorization of the definitions of life and death: (1)scientific/biological, (2)medic...
Are we gradually becoming the dead man? To be kind of people who are especially sensitive, the only way to encourage them to remain in the world is to kill some of their nerves and pretend to be as happy as others. Nevertheless, when the secret sorrows are so many to hide, the sea of sorrow will drown them, but they always pretend to be happy. The last poem “The Fish” illustrates the sorrow of life. The skin, the blood, the entrails, everything of the fish is depicted vividly and dramatically.
Gonzales, Laurence. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why: True Stories of Miraculous Endurance and Sudden Death. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2003. Print.
When George Eliot’s gothic story The Lifted Veil appeared in Blackwood’s in 1859, her partner George Henry Lewes was busy publishing his study of human anatomy, The Physiology of Common Life (1859). Intriguingly, this work of Lewes’s contains a brief tale which is as strikingly morbid as Eliot’s own. Unlike her story, his is not fictional — it is a scientific anecdote prefacing a detailed discussion of the respiratory system — but like The Lifted Veil its dark melodrama recommends it as “not a jeu d’esprit, but a jeu de melancolie.”[1] It concerns the case of a suicidal Frenchman, M. Déal, who, disillusioned by an unremarkable life and lack of reputation, resolves to exit the world in such a way as to remedy his perceived failings. To do so, he determines to asphyxiate himself on the poisonous fumes of burning charcoal while recording in a narrative the experience of his rapid demise. This testimony, he thinks, will be of much use to science, and so confer on him posthumously the intellectual dignity hitherto lacking in his life. Accordingly, he plans his suicide with the orderliness of an experimental scientist, as Lewes explains:
Before Paul started his career as a neurosurgeon, he was extremely passionate about literature and was determined to become a writer. At a young age, his parents inspired him to develop his interest in literature. After graduating from high
The theater and Carnegie Hall was where Paul "really lived". To him, the rest of his life was but "a sleep and a forgetting". The moment Paul stepped into either one of those places, he felt he was in his element. He "breathed like a prisoner set free". Paul's life was so monotonous and dull in comparison to his theater life, which he felt was his "secret temple". This alone provides insight into his character. He truly believed that he belonged to the arts. This makes Paul's case so sad because no one believed in him. This is what caused him to flee to New York to be in a place where he would be accepted for his true selt.
Current definitions of life and death have been categorized into two different cases: neurological and cardiorespiratory. Each category has a definite list of qualifications in order for death to be determined. Just the same, each category has contradictions and odd cases in which cardiorespiratory or neurological function are restored. 4 These contradictions leave room for opposition to the new definition of death. Many people and religious groups are not satisfied with the two categories of death. Scholars urge all to consider life as a social construct. We may not be able to determine death positively, but we can consider a patient’s quality of life, level of personhood, interaction with their external environment, and ability to maintain vital signs organically. These considerations may be a step toward the most modern definitions of life and death.
From the start of time, life and death have been the only two components living organisms can rely on. Every living organism from the coral in the sea to a human undergoes birth, a specialized life cycle and eventually death. Life is such a broad term with so many philosophical attachments from religion to evolution. Simply put, life is the ability to grow and change. Life separates plants and animals from things like water and rocks. For this paper I will focus on the different stages of human life, death and how the advancements in technology and medicine have directly affected both.