Suleika Jaouad

So I didn't really think anything of it.

I felt, you know, this deeper fear that maybe I somehow wasn't cut out for the adult world.

But as the months progressed,

progressed and I found myself in my first job as a paralegal out of college, those symptoms began to morph and change.

And ultimately I was given a diagnosis of a very aggressive form of leukemia called acute myeloid leukemia.

And up until that point, I had been someone who was, I think, first and foremost, a big dreamer.

I had my one-year plan and my five-year plan and my 10-year plan.

And I had these aspirations of becoming a foreign correspondent or a war correspondent.

And with that diagnosis, it was really a cleaving moment for me.

There was my life before and everything that came after.

And overnight, I lost my job.

I moved from Paris, where I'd been working, back into my childhood bedroom in upstate New York with its embarrassing pink walls and dusty boy band posters.

And I prepared to undergo what would ultimately be four years in the kingdom of the sick.

And, you know, the one thing that's in the contract is that we will all at some point have to contend with our mortality.

And yet somehow the threat of death always feels like a plot twist.

And I think that was especially true for me at 22.

I had this sense of time, you know, time to figure out who I was, time to get my act together, time to find

find a vocation that not only paid the bills, but hopefully nourished me in other ways.

And suddenly it was this very abrupt realization that I didn't have time.

I had about a 35% chance of long-term survival.