Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

11 reviews

333amreen's review

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

VERY INSIGHTFUL!!! not just into a doctor's life and their relationship with their patients & their confrontation with life and death everyday! But also, into HIS life, Paul's beautiful life & his philosophies that were astounding. Overall, an emotional ride, especially the latter part!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Grief, Death of parent, Medical content, Eating disorder, Pregnancy, Terminal illness, Injury/Injury detail, and Vomit

thefemale_nickmiller's review

dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Blood, Cancer, Chronic illness, Vomit, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail

lucymoosie's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring fast-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Terminal illness, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content

whatannikareads's review

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

super obvious observation, but you could tell paul was really intelligent and thoughtful from his writing alone. it's kinda crazy that he wrote this in the later stages of his cancer, when it's a struggle just to breathe, let alone write a memoir. it tickled the part of my brain that is interested in science and medicine, and i appreciate that this memoir merged those two interests. i learned a lot about neuroscience and the brutal work life of neurosurgeons. and i admire that paul was so passionate about writing and literature. i think because of how intelligent he is, he lost me at some parts that got more technical and descriptive. i think he occasionally strayed from his central point and went on tangents. but the epilogue made me cry hard and feel existential. i think memoirs like this are really thought-provoking and i'd like to dive into other works in this vein.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Terminal illness, Injury/Injury detail, Cancer, Death, Medical content, and Grief

eleos01's review

adventurous challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Cancer, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content

majakrmer's review against another edition

dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Death of parent, Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Cancer, Terminal illness, Death, and Medical content

flamingtashhh's review

reflective medium-paced

2.0

I thought this was way overhyped. Summary: guy tries to get as close to death as possible, achieves this goal. Dies. 

In seriousness, I didn’t like the author at all. I cried at the end because of course death is terrible, but this was out of no love for him. He seemed to have a lot of self-importance that was tied to his work. I’m very grateful for medicine, but this kind of arrogance- that which declares medical treatment to be the greatest of all treatment, or at least doctors the best givers of care there are- is dangerous and absurd. It’s like if Jack from Lost wrote a book. I know plenty of people like this author, and none of them are happy and I wouldn’t take seriously any philosophical treatises of theirs, either.

And I’m not going to make a habit of picking apart the prose of a man writing through his last year, so I have nothing to say about the writing itself. 

I actually liked the epilogue a lot, written by the author’s wife. She says there’s a lot he didn’t convey about himself and his values in the book, and honestly I really appreciated that. Her notes, and the pain and hurt in them, really gave another dimension to what would have otherwise been an uninteresting read. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Infertility, Chronic illness, Death, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Blood, Death of parent, Medical content, Vomit, and Cancer

sassyshark's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring relaxing sad fast-paced

5.0

Genuinely one of the most beautiful books I have every read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Terminal illness, Cancer, Death, and Blood

Moderate: Pregnancy and Gore

evelynbrady's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

ntvenessa's review

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

Of course you begin knowing the end. Dr Paul Kalanithi dies. This account, both unfinished and finished (depending on the sense you mean) is a deeply introspective reflection on life, meaning and death from someone who has been acutely attuned. The brief memoir focuses on Kalanithi's dual relationship with life and death as a doctor and as a patient, and underlying that, we see our own deepest existential fears reflected back in his humanity. Freshly diagnosed, it is Kalanithi's instinct to ensure the futures of those around him, though he himself is unsure of his present. Most of us are not dying of severe illness, but all of us will wonder what our lives can mean, what it should mean. Kalanithi grapples with increasing urgency, his own truth about what makes life meaningful, and it is this frenetic energy that is so calmly tempered by clarity and authority that is striking. No doubt the dying are suffering, but Kalanithi doesn't dwell so long. In a way, the brevity of the book brings to the fore what Kalanithi most wanted to say, and largely these were philosophical things. I think the foreword by Dr Abraham Verghese should be skipped and unread entirely, and I think the epilogue written by his wife, Dr Lucy Kalanithi was illuminating. After finishing Paul Kalanithi's meditative words, his clarity is softened by the bookend that is his wife's epilogue. We can only guess of Paul Kalanithi's contributions to neuroscience had he lived, but we already know of the contributions he has made. It is possible to live while dying.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Terminal illness, and Vomit

Minor: Death of parent