Khaled Mohamed’s Reviews > When Breath Becomes Air > Status Update

When you come to one of the many moments in life where 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.

“You know, I’ve been having this recurring nightmare that this day
was coming,” she said. “I don’t know how you did this for so long.”

As we uncovered the patient, the scrub nurse, one with whom I
hadn’t worked before, said, “You on call this weekend, Doc?”
“Nope.” And possibly never again.
“Got any more cases today?”
“Nope.” And possibly never again.
“Shit, well, I guess that means this is a happy ending! Work’s done. I
like happy endings, don’t you, Doc?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I like happy endings.”

Yet the paradox is that scientific methodology is the product of
human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth. We build
scientific theories to organize and manipulate the world, to reduce
phenomena into manageable units.

The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose,
that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win for
your patients. You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an
asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving

At moments, the weight of it all became palpable. It was in the air,
the stress and misery. Normally, you breathed it in, without noticing it.
But some days, like a humid muggy day, it had a suffocating weight of
its own.

It was as if this were the moment God said, “Let there be light!” You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.”

"Webster was much possessed by death .... And saw the skull beneath the skin.....And breastless creatures under ground Leaned backward .....with a lipless grin."

—T. S. Eliot, “Whispers of Immortality”