I was probably a patient at Stanford Neurosurgery about the same time that Paul Kalanithi did his residency there. At the time I had a giant bleeding brain aneurysm, and he would have been one of the elite young doctors receiving their final training in the art of headmeat cutting. Who could have predicted that 4 years later he would be dying of cancer and about to write what sounds like a truly special memoir?

No one could have predicted this. 

It's a sad situation but it does sound like he wrote something truly special.