Suleika Jaouad

And within those first couple of months in the hospital, I learned

that none of the standard chemotherapy treatments were working for me.

And that my only shot at the cure was going to be experimental clinical trials.

And if I was very lucky, a bone marrow transplant.

And so that was my life from age 22 until about 27.

But I think what was surprising to me was that more frightening than the fear of death was

more unsettling than the illness and the pain that came with it was the sense that I hadn't done what I wanted to do in my life, that I had spent my entire adult life, you know, all, you know, whatever it was, four years of it at that point, preparing to be a person.

I had a

you know, spent all nighters so I could get a scholarship to go to college.

I had worked really hard to be able to set myself up for some form of independence.

And suddenly I found myself in the very opposite place than I'd planned in those, you know, first one and five year plans.

I found myself back in my childhood bedroom, living between there and hospital rooms.

And as dependent on others as I'd ever been since infancy.

Yeah.

And so it was this rude awakening and realization of my finitude, of our finitude.

And more than that, I think it was a quest for me to figure out what this experience meant for me and how I could define some sense of selfhood within it.

Yeah.

So that first summer that I spent in the hospital, I, especially when I found out that chemotherapy was not working for me, felt so angry.

I remember waking up one morning and closing the blinds in my hospital room.

And I was very lucky to have a hospital room that happened to face Central Park, which as far as hospital rooms went, was kind of a coveted hospital room to have that I'd found myself in.