給生活正在逐漸褪色的你: When Breath Becomes Air

I believe that there's a right timing for every book.

The first time I encountered When Breath Becomes Air was when a classmate picked this book for her English SBA. It's been on my “I know enough about it for a chit chat but haven't actually read it” list since then. I'd always thought this book to be too heavy and morbid. Reading is a form of escapism for me, and sometimes I just want to swim in my pool of self pity for a bit without having somebody to remind me “hey, it could be worse”. 

Then fast forward to year 5, I made some new friends, some of which are very passionate readers. And when somebody offers to lend you a book:

1) you can't say no, and

2) you have to read it first and return it ASAP before it accidentally becomes a permanent part of your bookshelf.

So I finally read When Breath Becomes Air. It's not one of those books where I think to myself “I wish I'd read it sooner!”. It came at the right time, right when I was beginning to lose drive and motivation for medical school. 

It's hard to move forward when you've lost sight of the big picture and the future you see consists of on-call nights and overrunning OPD sessions. 

We can't function on romantic idealisation but mudanity could quench what's left of the passion which brought us to medical school in the first place. Sometimes it's difficult to find the balance. 

As we move towards graduation, there's more anxiety surrounding career, specialty choice and job placements. Every conversation I have with my partner somehow goes back to this, and it gets very frustrating and confusing at times. How the author came to pick his specialty of choice is a very good example for us to follow. He was adamant on finding his calling, not a 9-5 job, and having that purpose in life is what made his beautiful.

讀完這本書，我彷彿再次看清一次又一次的考試，要追求的是什麼。

The call to protect life — and not merely life but another’s identity; it is perhaps not too much to say another soul — was obvious in its sacredness.

醫生的角色並非「治療疾病」，那是藥物和研究員的功勞。The physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patents to their old lives, but totake into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence. 醫生要做的，或許是讓病人的人生在疾病之中也能夠圓滿。

醫護有着專業知識，其實醫患關係本質上有些 
power imbalance，也許當醫患角色互換，才能真正意會病人的「無助感」。as a doctor, I was an agent, a cause; as a patient, Iwas merely something to which things happened. 這是作者在抗癌期間的體會。

醫生的一句話，攸關病人往後數年的人生。但病人需要依靠，醫生也需要盼望。There we were, doctor and patient, in a relationshp that sometimes carries a magisterial air and other times, like now, was no more, and no less, than 2 people huddled together, as one faces the abyss. Doctors, it turns out, need hope too.

醫生也是人，自然有人的脆弱，但他們也擁有一種只有同為人類才有的溫柔。這種溫柔的共情，源於對生命的理解。因為他們對人生種種美好能夠共鳴，才會衷心盼望病人能夠有最理想的結果，即時並非每次都做到。

我們應常懷謙卑和感恩的心，與病人同行。很少職業可以如此貼近生命的本質，正因如此我們更要努力成為擔當得起如斯責任的醫者。

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近況：
有時候，當感覺快要窒息時，退後一步看看四周的世界，冷靜下來就發現其實很多事情也無關緊要。

城市的深夜流淌着一種安寧的氛圍，讓思緒得以釋放，遊走在萬家燈火之間。

身體休息夠了，心神何時才能停下？