When he was 19, B. J. Miller, a Princeton student at the time, was on the way to a Wawa with friends when he decided to climb a commuter train near campus. “Just out on the town horsing around, doing nothing particularly crazy,” he says. “We had done crazier things.” This time, though, was different: Miller was electrocuted when electricity from the overhead wires jumped to his wristwatch. The electrical burns were so severe that he ended up losing three of his limbs. It was that harrowing, near-fatal accident that drove him to go into medicine and, ultimately, palliative care, working often with terminally ill patients. Now, nearly 30 years later, he’s co-written (with Shoshana Berger) a book called A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death.
- GQ
