Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Edinburgh Neurology Book Club recently discussed When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi1 over an evening with dinner at a neurology consultant’s home. Paul was a gifted 36-year-old neurosurgeon in the USA. Diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in 2013, he died in 2015. His autobiography explores the themes of life and death.
The book opens with Paul hooked to an intravenous line in his own hospital, reviewing his CT images pre-consultation. They reveal that he is riddled with metastases. His wife Lucy lies by his side on the hospital bed as the reality of terminal cancer dawns on both. This is a moving scene that also evoked a practical lesson. Paul was provided freedom to review his CT because he was a doctor. We have all had experience of treating patients with medical backgrounds but agreed that illness makes people vulnerable, and we should manage colleagues as any other patient.
Paul had …
Footnotes
Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge contribution from Richard Davenport, Peter Fernandes, Ingrid Hoeritzauer, Graeme Mackenzie, Fiona Moreton, Timothy Soane, Briony Waddell, Tim Wilkinson and Charis Wong.
Contributors GKM and DJL contributed equally to this work and are joint first authors. Both made substantial contributions to the conception of the work, drafting the work and revising it, and made final approval of the version to be published. Both are in agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. A group of neurology registrars and a consultant from Western General Hospital in Edinburgh discussed the book and gave input into the drafting of the manuscript.
Competing interests None declared.
Linked Articles
- Editors' commentary
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Detection of EGFR and KRAS mutations on trans-thoracic needle aspiration of lung nodules by high resolution melting analysis
- Unravelling signal escape through maintained EGFR activation in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): new treatment options
- Differential clinicopathological features, treatments and outcomes in patients with Exon 19 deletion and Exon 21 L858R EGFR mutation-positive adenocarcinoma non-small-cell lung cancer
- Detection of EGFR mutations using target capture sequencing in plasma of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer
- A favourable prognostic marker for EGFR mutant non-small cell lung cancer: immunohistochemical analysis of MUC5B
- Detection of epidermal growth factor receptor gene mutations in cytology specimens from patients with non-small cell lung cancer utilising high-resolution melting amplicon analysis
- The frequency of EGFR and KRAS mutations in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): routine screening data for central Europe from a cohort study
- Mechanisms of resistance to EGFR-targeted drugs: lung cancer
- Efficacy and safety of first line treatments for patients with advanced epidermal growth factor receptor mutated, non-small cell lung cancer: systematic review and network meta-analysis
- Somatic mutations of the epidermal growth factor receptor and non-small-cell lung cancer