June 29, 2016
An Enemy at the Gate
By Jim Tune Paul Kalanithi, a nonsmoking neurosurgeon, was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer at the age of 36. He chronicled his experiences in his memoir, When Breath Becomes Air. Kalanithi wrote: Death, so familiar to me in my work, was now paying a personal visit. . . . Standing at the crossroads where I should have been able to see and follow the footprints of countless patients I had treated over the years, I saw instead only a blank, a harsh, vacant, gleaming white desert, as if a sandstorm had erased all trace of familiarity. Death makes life seem
