"Every day, facing its end, there was a beginning."
The fight against cancer, birth and evolution, and the boundary between life and death.
Recorded by a professor of oncology at Seoul National University
Journey to Life

Professor Kim Beom-seok of the Department of Oncology at Seoul National University, author of the best-selling book “A Certain Death Spoke to Life” and a professor who has treated cancer patients and studied tumors for over 20 years, has published a book about his fight against cancer as a doctor and scientist and his exploration of the boundary between life and death.
In "Death is Not a Straight Line," the author begins with the loss of his father to cancer when he was young, examines humanity's struggle against cancer, and delves into the Big Bang and the birth of life.
And it explores the characteristics of cancer, which has the duality of death and immortality, through the eyes of a scientist and raises philosophical questions about the boundary between life and death.

The following year, my father's lung cancer recurred.
As my visits to the hospital became more frequent, my father quit his job.
There were many times when I would lie at home all day, and there were many times when I would groan and say, “Ouch, ouch.”
My aunts said that she was not in good condition, but they did not tell me how bad it was.
I thought I was all grown up, but adults still saw me as a child.
Then one day, my father called me from the bathroom.
“I can’t reach your back very well.
“Could you give me a back rub?”

When I went into the bathroom, my father was sitting there with his bare body exposed.
The long surgical scar along the ribs was immediately visible.
The surgical scar, which appeared to be at least 50 centimeters long, was deeper and more painful than I had imagined.
It was a shock.
A lot happened while I was away at the bathhouse with my father.
Although I didn't know the exact circumstances, I could clearly feel that my father's health was very poor.
I calmed down and gently rubbed my back with soap, just like my father did when I was little.
That day, my father smiled for the first time in a long time.
--- From the "Prologue"

The moment when a liquid turns into a gas comes suddenly.
Water that is fine up to 99 degrees suddenly boils and turns into steam the moment it reaches 100 degrees.
The signs of accumulating 1 degree, 1 degree, while rising to 99 degrees will lead to change only when it reaches 100 degrees.
That point is the critical point.
Death was like that too.
All deaths come sooner than expected.
Death is not linear.
When the critical point is crossed, the body breaks in an instant.
The moment you cross the threshold, your body changes in an instant.
This side is life, that side is death.
It was like that until the last vital was cut off.
--- 「Chapter 1.
From "In the Middle of Chaos"

The once energetic cancer ward resident's mind eventually became a mess.
Infection, bleeding, sepsis, shock, multiple organ damage, respiratory failure, renal failure, heart failure, hypotension, and ultimately cardiac arrest.
The line between sepsis, respiratory failure, and hypotensive shock became so blurred that it was difficult to tell where it ended, leading to a total crisis.
In the battlefield of cancer, when the front lines collapsed, it became difficult to distinguish between friend and foe due to the incoming enemy forces, and when the situation reached a point of total chaos, patients could not endure and died.

Although the course of the critical point collapse varied, the result was always death, and the cause was always cancer.
If cancer is not controlled, death is inevitable.
The root cause is cancer.
I had to get rid of the cancer by any means necessary.
The direct cause of death listed on the death certificate was simply the word 'cancer'.
In 2004, as a second-year resident, I decided to seriously fight cancer.
And among the internal medicine departments, I chose hematology and oncology as my specialty.
I wanted to beat cancer at all costs.
--- 「Chapter 2.
From "Why Do We Die"

Introspection is bound to happen.
Cancer cells have developed resistance by exploiting the inherent capacity of cells to evolve and survive.
Cancer cells are smarter than humans.
Through these experiences, we finally grasped the essence of the struggle against cancer.
To keep up with this disease, we have to keep inventing and reinventing strategies, learning and relearning.
Just as we call checkmate in a game of chess and then get counterattacked, cancer is always one step ahead of us.
To defeat our cunning enemy, we had to become much smarter.
Once again, a new approach was needed.
As always.
--- 「Chapter 4.
From “Transitions in Cancer Treatment”

When immune cells encounter cancer cells, they're sure to recognize them as abnormal. Why don't they recognize them? Why can't they kill these harmful cells? The crux of the problem lies in the distinction between "benefit" and "failure."
The enemy that the immune cells had to kill was the enemy within, the altered self.
It was a little self-sufficient, but it wasn't self-sufficient either.
I was old, but I wasn't me.
Killing the me that has changed from the whole me is fundamentally not an easy task.
It's always painful to face the changed me.
To figure out why immunotherapy wasn't working, we had to dig deeper.
I had to know about cancer and I had to know about myself.
To defeat the enemy, we had to know ourselves more fundamentally than anything else.
--- 「Chapter 5.
From "The enemy is inside"

That's why it's so difficult to face and realize that I was the problem and that I have changed.
Because I am the problem, it is even more difficult to think about and put into practice the idea of ​​changing myself to improve the situation.
When an individual reflects on a mistake, it takes a particularly strong will to find the cause of the mistake within himself.
It's easier to accuse others of being weird than to admit that I'm weird.
It's easier to think that the world won't turn without me.
It's easier and more convenient to curse the world and politicians.
Cool self-censorship is inherently difficult.
--- 「-Chapter 6.
Among “Self and Transformed Self”

If you ask me how long I have had cancer in my body, it is difficult to give an easy answer.
This is because cancer cells are constantly being created and disappearing throughout a person's life.
Cancer cells are growing in my body as I write this book, and in your body as you read this book, at this very moment.
However, they were lucky enough to not be able to take nutrients and starve to death, or they died because they could not adapt to their surroundings, or they were killed by immune cells, or they physically fell off and died, and so on ...
Starvation, cold, infection, and trauma are also major causes of cancer cell death.
For these various reasons, many cancer cells die on their own before we can even diagnose and detect the cancer.
--- Chapter 7.
From "In the beginning was the beginning"

When cancer cells proliferate, they adopt the same growth patterns they used during the fetal stage.
The rate at which actual cancer cells divide and grow is similar to the rate at which fetal cells divide and grow.
The immune evasion mechanisms used by cancer cells are not new; they have been around since the fetal period.
The difference is that cancer grows indefinitely inside the body, whereas a fetus finishes growing after 10 months and is expelled from the mother's body.
They use the same survival strategy, but one has no end and the other has an end.
The side that has no end is not beautiful, and the side that has an end is beautiful.
We despair when cancer cells proliferate, and rejoice when a fetus grows.
One of the reasons why cancer treatment is difficult is because it is impossible to eliminate the normal proliferative ability of cancer cells.
--- Chapter 9.
From “The beginning and the end are circular”

The more I learned about cancer, the more I became confused about how to conquer it and prevent people from dying from it.
Sometimes I felt compassion for the cancer cells.
We also learned about the exquisite survival mechanisms of life forms that have persisted for billions of years in the most successful survival machines pursuing immortality.
I was at a loss as to how to understand the process by which anger about cancer led to understanding about cancer.
What is clear is that as our perspective changed, the world began to look different.
The world is incomprehensible to those who do not try to understand it, but to those who try to understand it, the world reveals its true nature.
The world that appears on the outside is different from the real thing.
The world I looked at from the center and the world I looked at from a distance, taking a step back and looking at it objectively without any emotions were so different.

--- Chapter 10.
From "A Guide to the Jipjigi"

From my perspective as a doctor, it's a miracle that you don't have cancer.
If cells divide so rapidly and the process continues for 60, 70, or 80 years, it would be even stranger if among that number of cells, one or two cancer cells did not develop.
Our bodies are maintained in order by harmoniously functioning 30 trillion cells containing 3 billion DNA bases for decades.
This fact itself is astonishing and truly wonderful.
We simply describe it as 'being alive', a miracle in which events with extremely low probability unfold continuously at every moment.
--- 「Chapter 11.
From "The Miracle of Being Alive"

My body also just keeps gathering and disappearing according to certain conditions.
My body is more like a sand castle than a fixed entity.
Just as a sandcastle on the beach crumbles little by little and is rebuilt little by little, my body also maintains its shape by repeatedly disappearing and appearing.
Fortunately, they have a common blueprint called DNA, which allows them to maintain the shape of their sandcastles. However, at some point, errors in the blueprint accumulate, and a sandcastle is created that is different from the original.
If there is a problem with the core part that supports the sand castle, the sand castle will collapse and the sand will be swept away by the waves and returned to the sea.
I, who came from nature, will one day return to nature.
--- 「Chapter 12.
From "We are born every moment and die every moment"

To capture time, we need to increase the number of memorable new experiences.
Even if it's the same commute every day, why not take a different route today?
Let's meet new people.
Let's try some different food.
Let's listen to new music.
New experiences and memories not only become memories, but also extend life.
If that happens, the day will be shorter and the year will be longer.
For this reason, a few years ago I started nagging my patients.
Go on a trip.
Go on a restaurant tour with your family.
Talk a lot.
Take lots of pictures.
Write a diary.
Don't spend money on things, spend money on experiences.
Even if we talk about this, the habits of living a conventional life become ingrained in us, and it becomes difficult to change as we get older.
As we age, our brain's ability to accept new things naturally declines.
--- 「Chapter 14.
From “Death and Aging”

Cancer was a transformation of myself from the beginning.
The cancer I so desperately wanted to get rid of was a distorted version of myself, a version of myself I hated.
So cancer gave me an unexpected message.
It also taught me the importance of the little things in each day.
Life is precious because it is inherently uncertain and full of chance.
Our miracle is right here.
Today is a miracle.
It is not a misfortune to have cancer, but it is a miracle to be alive without cancer.
Everything we took for granted was not so.
All of these were simple truths that I would not have known if I had not studied cancer.

--- Chapter 15.
From "Jeonggyeon - What Are We Fighting Against"