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Paul Kalanithi is thirty six and so close to finishing his training as a neurosurgeon when he finds out he has stage IV lung cancer. As an undergraduate Kalanithi studied English literature and his love of reading and writing had been a constant through out his life. He had always felt that when he was older he would like to write and had decided to focus on neurosurgery for now, where he could make a bigger difference by saving people's lives. All his hopes and dreams for the future were suddenly unrealistic as an upper limit of a handful of years was put onto his life. Kalanithi pens this memoir, dealing with the struggles of facing death and having to go from being able to save others lives to now be the one staring down mortality.

The writing was excellent but reading this memoir was so depressing. Just the fact that someone so brilliant was going to die and not be able to keep contributing when they clearly had so much to offer. I was disappointed by where the book left off but then I read the afterword to find out that he had died before he could even finish the memoir which just made it twenty times worse. Death is inevitable but like Kalanithi acknowledges we don't really think about it as being imminent and so it's not the same as when you're terminal and trying to make peace with dying. I just found it so hard to read him struggling to make sense of how to best use the rest of his time especially since there was no way for him to know how limited it really was. Also the fact that he didn't get to see more of his daughter and watch her grow up. It was just depressing honestly, well written but I just felt sad and I don't know what else to say. It just feels unfair because I wish I was even a fraction as smart or eloquent but I'm not but I get to live and he doesnt.