Paul Kalanithi

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Paul Sudhir Arul Kalanithi (April 1, 1977 - March 9, 2015) was an Indian-American neurosurgeon and writer. His book When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir about his life and illness battling stage IV metastatic lung cancer. It was posthumously published by Random House in January 2016. It was on The New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller list for multiple weeks.

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Early life and education

Paul Kalanithi was born on April 1, 1977 and lived in Westchester, New York. He was born to a Christian family hailing from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, India. Kalanithi had two brothers, Jeevan and Suman; Jeevan is a computer/robotics engineer and Suman is a neurologist. The family moved from Bronxville, New York to Kingman, Arizona when Kalanithi was 10. Kalanithi attended Kingman High School, where he graduated as valedictorian.

Kalanithi attended Stanford University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in English Literature and a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology in 2000. After Stanford, he attended the University of Cambridge, where he studied at Darwin College and graduated with a Master of Arts in the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine. Although he initially considered pursuing a Ph.D. in English Literature, Kalanithi then attended the Yale School of Medicine, where he graduated in 2007 cum laude, winning the Dr. Louis H. Nahum Prize for his research on Tourette's syndrome. He was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha national medical honor society.

At Yale, Kalanithi met Lucy Goddard, who would become his future wife.

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Career

After graduating from medical school, Kalanithi returned to Stanford to complete his residency training in neurosurgery and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at Stanford University School of Medicine.

In May 2013, Kalanithi was diagnosed with metastatic stage IV non-small-cell EGFR-positive lung cancer. He died, aged 37, in March 2015.

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Personal life

Kalanithi was married to Lucy (née Goddard), with whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth Acadia ("Cady"). Lucy is an internist at Stanford University School of Medicine's Clinical Excellence Research Center and wrote the epilogue to When Breath Becomes Air.

Although Kalanithi was raised in a devout Christian family, he turned away from the faith in his teens and twenties in favour of other ideas. However, he retained "the central values of Christianity -- sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness" and returned to Christianity later in his life. In his book, he even states that if he had been more religious in his youth, he would have become a pastor.

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Bibliography

Non-fiction books

• When Breath Becomes Air

Essays

• "How Long Have I Got Left?" for The New York Times
• "Before I go: Time warps for a young surgeon with metastatic lung cancer" for Stanford Medicine Magazine
• "My last day as a surgeon" for The New Yorker
• "Terra Incognita: Remembering Sherwin Nuland" for The Paris Review

Scholarly articles

Only first-authored articles are listed below

• Kalanithi, P. S.; Arrigo, R. T.; Tran, P; Gephart, M. H.; Shuer, L; Fisher, R; Boakye, M (2014). "Rehospitalization and emergency department use rates before and after vagus nerve stimulation for epilepsy: Use of state databases to provide longitudinal data across multiple clinical settings". Neuromodulation: Technology at the Neural Interface. 17 (1): 60-4; discussion 64-5. doi:10.1111/ner.12051. PMID 23551457. 
• Kalanithi, P. S.; Henderson, J. M. (2012). "Emerging Horizons in Neuromodulation - New Frontiers in Brain and Spine Stimulation". International review of neurobiology. International Review of Neurobiology. 107: 185-205. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-404706-8.00010-3. ISBN 9780124047068. PMID 23206683. 
• Kalanithi, P. A.; Arrigo, R; Boakye, M (2012). "Morbid obesity increases cost and complication rates in spinal arthrodesis". Spine. 37 (11): 982-8. doi:10.1097/BRS.0b013e31823bbeef. PMID 22037526. 
• Kalanithi, P; Schubert, R. D.; Lad, S. P.; Harris, O. A.; Boakye, M (2011). "Hospital costs, incidence, and inhospital mortality rates of traumatic subdural hematoma in the United States". Journal of Neurosurgery. 115 (5): 1013-8. doi:10.3171/2011.6.JNS101989. PMID 21819196. 
• Kalanithi PS, Patil CG, Boakye M (2009). "National complication rates and disposition after posterior lumbar fusion for acquired spondylolisthesis". Spine. 34 (18): 1963-9. doi:10.1097/BRS.0b013e3181ae2243. PMID 19652635. CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter (link)
• Kalanithi, P. S.; Zheng, W; Kataoka, Y; Difiglia, M; Grantz, H; Saper, C. B.; Schwartz, M. L.; Leckman, J. F.; Vaccarino, F. M. (2005). "Altered parvalbumin-positive neuron distribution in basal ganglia of individuals with Tourette syndrome". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 102 (37): 13307-12. Bibcode:2005PNAS..10213307K. doi:10.1073/pnas.0502624102. PMC 1201574 . PMID 16131542.  father. name.

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References

Source of the article : Wikipedia