American Surgeon - "Before I Go": Paul Kalanithi, writer and neurosurgeon, dies at 37 | Stanford Medicine

[Fred Sanders]

Paul Kalanithi wrote essays for The New York Times and Stanford Medicine reflecting on being a physician and a patient, the human experience of facing death, and the joy he found despite terminal illness.


http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/03/stanford-neurosurgeon-writer-paul-kalanithi-dies-at-37.html

Excerpts from Dr. Kalanithi's last Washington Post Essay:

Inspired Life

Before I Go: A Stanford neurosurgeon’s parting wisdom about life and time


"But the years did, as promised, fly by. Six years passed in a flash, but then, heading into chief residency, I developed a classic constellation of symptoms — weight loss, fevers, night sweats, unremitting back pain, cough — indicating a diagnosis quickly confirmed: metastatic lung cancer. The gears of time ground down. While able to limp through the end of residency on treatment, I relapsed, underwent chemo and endured a prolonged hospitalization."


"Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed."
............

"Yet there is dynamism in our house. Our daughter was born days after I was released from the hospital. Week to week, she blossoms: a first grasp, a first smile, a first laugh. Her pediatrician regularly records her growth on charts, tick marks of her progress over time. A brightening newness surrounds her. As she sits in my lap smiling, enthralled by my tuneless singing, an incandescence lights the room."

_________________________________



"Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/03/12/before-i-go-a-stanford-neurosurgeons-parting-wisdom-about-life-and-time/?tid=pm_pop

........................

Rest in Peace, Doctor, chase the wind, the world will miss your breath.

The world is so much more than the self serving politicians and those driven ever so entertainingly mad by power lust and rapturous self righteousness, these true and selfless heroes of everyday life and death - those that do the mandated job of kill or be killed are not my "heroes" - these are the true heroes, by the millions they do exist, toiling in a grim happiness helping others outside the glare of public viewing and the auto-praise heaped on mere warriors.

Where is their ticker tape parade?

[handmade34]

1. "Rest in Peace, Doctor"

“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

[MBS]

2. "these true and selfless heroes of everyday life and death"

Thanks for reminding us who the real heroes are.

This was a PERSON:
(from the Stanford obituary):

He closed his Stanford Medicine essay with words for his infant daughter: “When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”

In a March 10 Facebook post, Suman Kalanithi, one of Kalanithi’s brothers, wrote, “Yesterday my brother Paul passed away about two years after being diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. He did so with customary bravery and poise, and died in peace on his own terms with his family around him. My brother achieved more in his short life than what most people do in twice that time. He was a good doctor, a good husband, a good father and a good man. I am extremely proud of him, both in life and in death. Rest in peace, my beloved brother.”
. . . .
In what proved to be his last days of life, Kalanithi worked on a teaching module with the director of Stanford’s palliative care education and training program, VJ Periyakoil, MD. “The module would teach the lessons he learned from being on both sides of the aisle — being a neurosurgeon at the top of his game to being a patient with cancer. We talked about how being the doctor is all about having control and wielding power, while being a patient is all about loss of control and feeling vulnerable,” said Periyakoil, a clinical associate professor of medicine.

“His ‘dual citizenship’ as a doctor and as a seriously ill patient had taught him that respectful communication is the bedrock of all medicine. We talked about the design of the module and how we could tailor it to make our medical students understand that the so-called soft skills of medicine are the truly hard skills to teach and to learn.” As a chief resident, Kalanithi was a skilled mentor, said current chief resident Anand Veeravagu, MD. “He has a way of identifying your strengths and weaknesses to elevate your skills in unison. Gifted,” Veeravagu said, adding that Kalanithi was also a dedicated advocate for the human being inside each of his patients.

[Jefferson23]

3. I imagine he knows he does not need a ticker tape parade. RIP good man..always. K&R

[shrike]

4. Gorgeous writing

What a loss on so many levels . . .

[zazen]

5. "Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past."

That is 20 lbs of pure joy sitting on his lap (on top of the pure joy of her Daddy). Lucky girl. Lucky world to have had him for a time.

[raging moderate]

6. What a beautiful human being we have lost!

How lucky we are to have had him among us even for such a little while! Live on in love, Doctor Kalanithi!

[erronis]

7. Amen.

[magical thyme]

8. K&R nt