给生活正在逐渐褪色的你: 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.

读完这本书，我仿佛再次看清一次又一次的考试，要追求的是什么。

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.

医生的角色并非「治疗疾病」，那是药物和研究员的功劳。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. 医生要做的，或许是让病人的人生在疾病之中也能够圆满。

医护有着专业知识，其实医患关系本质上有些 
power imbalance，也许当医患角色互换，才能真正意会病人的「无助感」。as a doctor, I was an agent, a cause; as a patient, Iwas merely something to which things happened. 这是作者在抗癌期间的体会。

医生的一句话，攸关病人往后数年的人生。但病人需要依靠，医生也需要盼望。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.

医生也是人，自然有人的脆弱，但他们也拥有一种只有同为人类才有的温柔。这种温柔的共情，源于对生命的理解。因为他们对人生种种美好能够共鸣，才会衷心盼望病人能够有最理想的结果，即时并非每次都做到。

我们应常怀谦卑和感恩的心，与病人同行。很少职业可以如此贴近生命的本质，正因如此我们更要努力成为担当得起如斯责任的医者。

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近况：
有时候，当感觉快要窒息时，退后一步看看四周的世界，冷静下来就发现其实很多事情也无关紧要。

城市的深夜流淌着一种安宁的氛围，让思绪得以释放，游走在万家灯火之间。

身体休息够了，心神何时才能停下？