In May of 2013, the Stanford University neurosurgical resident Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic lung cancer. He was thirty-six years old. In his two remaining years—he died in March of 2015—he continued his medical training, became the father to a baby girl, and wrote beautifully about his experience facing mortality as a doctor and a patient. In this excerpt from his posthumously published memoir, “When Breath Becomes Air,” which is out on January 12th, from Random House, Kalanithi writes about his last day practicing medicine.
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