You Might
Live Twice
A surgeon's journey from stroke to self-mastery: a roadmap that may change your life too
What if the life you thought was over was only your first?
Dr. Simon Kirby had built the life he had worked for — a career as a surgeon, a family he loved, and a future that seemed firmly in place.
Then, in an instant, everything changed.
A catastrophic brain injury left him fighting first to survive — and then to recover abilities most of us take for granted.
Walking. Speaking. Seeing clearly. Living independently.
But You Might Live Twice is not simply a story about surviving.
It is a story about rebuilding.
And about what can happen when the life you planned disappears — and you decide to create another.
This isn't just a book about stroke. It's a book about what comes next.
Most of us will eventually encounter something we didn't plan for. A moment when the map we have been following suddenly becomes useless.
A diagnosis.
A failure.
A loss.
A career that no longer fits.
A dream that disappears.
You Might Live Twice explores a simple but powerful possibility:
The end of one version of your life does not have to be the end of your story. Sometimes it can be the beginning of another.
You only get one life.
Or maybe you don't.
Left foot.
Right foot.
You don't need to see the entire road.
You just need to keep moving.
There are moments when rebuilding a life can feel impossibly complicated. Simon discovered that sometimes the answer is remarkably simple.
Take the next step. Then another. And another.
That philosophy helped carry him from catastrophic injury, through rehabilitation, back into medicine and ultimately toward an entirely different understanding of what it means to live well.
About Dr. Simon Kirby
Dr. Simon Kirby's career has crossed disciplines few people experience in a single lifetime — engineering, surgery, neuroscience and pathology.
After training as an electrical engineer, he entered medicine and ultimately became an otolaryngologist and facial plastic surgeon.
A catastrophic neurological injury abruptly ended his surgical career and began a long process of recovery and reinvention. Rather than leave medicine, he returned to training and rebuilt his career as a pathologist.
His memoir, You Might Live Twice, tells the story of that journey and explores the lessons it taught him about resilience, perspective, neuroplasticity and the possibility of beginning again.
What will you do with your second chance?
Sometimes we choose a new direction.
Sometimes life chooses it for us.
Either way, the question eventually becomes the same:
What will you do next?
You Might Live Twice
A surgeon's journey from stroke to self-mastery:
a roadmap that may change your life too