Nuland was a renowned surgeon-philosopher whose seminal book about mortality, How We Die, had come out when I was in high school but made it into my hands only in medical school. Few books I had read so directly and wholly

The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months

When you’re sick, the act of living is more act than living. Healthy people have the luxury of forgetting that their existence depends on a cascade of precise cellular interactions. Not you. “Farewell me, cherished me, now so hazy, so indistinct,” Daudet writes—a line I now often thought of.