What makes life worth living in the face of death | Lucy Kalanithi

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2017

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

In this deeply moving talk, Lucy Kalanithi reflects on life and purpose, sharing the story of her late husband, Paul, a young neurosurgeon who turned to writing after his terminal cancer diagnosis. "Engaging in the full range of experience -- living and dying, love and loss -- is what we get to do," Kalanithi says. "Being human doesn't happen despite suffering -- it happens within it."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features caregiver and writer Lucy Cullenithy, recorded live at TEDMed 2016.
0:16.2	A few days after my husband, Paul, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
0:23.0	We were lying in our bed at home,
0:25.5	and Paul said,
0:27.3	it's going to be OK.
0:29.7	And I remember answering back,
0:32.2	yes.
0:33.4	We just don't know what OK means yet.
0:38.8	Paul and I had met as first-year medical students at Yale.
0:42.5	He was smart and kind and super funny.
0:46.5	He used to keep a gorilla suit in the trunk of his car,
0:50.2	and he'd say, it's for emergencies only.
0:54.5	I fell in love with Paul as I watched the care he took with his patients.
0:59.1	He stayed late talking with them,
1:01.4	seeking to understand the experience of illness
1:04.7	and not just its technicalities.
1:07.9	He later told me he fell in love with me
1:10.1	when he saw me cry over an EKG of a heart that had ceased beating.
1:16.5	We didn't know it yet, but even in the heady days of young love,
1:21.3	we were learning how to approach suffering together.
1:26.1	We got married and became doctors.
1:28.9	I was working as an internist,
	...

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