Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

29 reviews

sabrinas's review

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Grief, Chronic illness, Medical content, Death, Cancer, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Pregnancy

Minor: Infertility, Excrement, Addiction, Suicide, Dementia, Car accident, and Blood

theverycraftyvegan's review against another edition

challenging emotional sad medium-paced

5.0

I cannot stress this enough, if you’re reading/listening to this book be fully prepared to cry. A friend recommended I not listen to this audiobook while driving because I would need to pull over and cry. I heeded that advice and I listened at home—alone—and I openly wept. 

Paul’s words were very clinical at times but never cold or without emotion. This was his life’s story about his education, career, and personal life but most importantly it’s about how he continued to live even though he knew he was dying. 

Lucy’s epilogue absolutely wrecked me. 

Paul: ”I’m ready.” 

Lucy: “I climbed into the last bed we’d share.”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Medical trauma, Terminal illness, Grief, Chronic illness, Death, and Medical content

Moderate: Infertility and Pregnancy

Minor: Vomit

mel_s_bookshelf's review against another edition

emotional inspiring fast-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Terminal illness, Death, and Cancer

Minor: Suicide and Pregnancy

esimplicity's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Death, Chronic illness, Medical content, and Cancer

Minor: Pregnancy and Suicide

emgovan's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, and Terminal illness

Minor: Child death, Chronic illness, Drug abuse, Vomit, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Pregnancy

balfies's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad fast-paced

3.0

Immensely powerful, visceral posthumous memoir by a neuroscientist-neurosurgeon about his shifting philosophies around life and death in the face of his work and his cancer diagnosis. This was truly compelling to read, I finished it in one sitting. He has a very distinct, intelligent voice. Feel like this is one to return to at big moments of hardship and grief in life.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Child death, Death of parent, Medical content, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Terminal illness, Death, and Suicide

agnesg's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Terminal illness, Grief, Medical content, and Death

Moderate: Pregnancy and Blood

laurenjbb's review

challenging emotional inspiring sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Cancer, Vomit, Violence, Terminal illness, Medical content, Gore, Excrement, Chronic illness, Death, and Alcohol

eve81's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Terminal illness, Cancer, Pregnancy, Medical content, and Death

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