No, this is not something pertaining to me and these are not my sentiments. In fact, that is a quote from Samuel Beckett, that appeared as the salvation of Paul Lakanithi in his superb essay entitled “How Long Have I Got Left?”
It is a discussion of how he, as a 36 year old chief resident in neurological surgery at Stanford University, get diagnosed with lung cancer and transforms from doctor to patient in the blink of an eye.
He takes us through the whole process of desperately seeking statistics as a way to deal with impending death and slowly draws us through the reasoning as to why doctors cannot be more specific and why we should not want them to be.
This is one of the best essays of its kind I have ever read and I highly recommend it.
Note: Kudos to Yoni Freedhoff from the blog Weighty Matters for passing this along.
