Thursday, March 4, 2021

Between Two Kingdoms

A Memoir of Interrupted Life
by Suleika Jaouad


In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing to enter "the real world". She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

 

It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like 1,000 invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: acute myelogenous leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next three years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

 

This is an extraordinary book.  You should need no more inducements to read it. (I listened to the book on Audible.com.  It is read by the author who does an amazing job!).

Also, see the TED Talk...