In 2010, at the age of 22, Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. The five-year survival rate for adults with this cancer was 33%.
She realized there was a problem when that the itching on her legs wouldn’t go away. This got worse, then she was exhausted all day. It took a year of going to different doctors before she found a doctor who knew what was going on.
In her book, Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika describes how draining it was to deal with cancer and fear of dying every day for four years as she went through multiple rounds of chemo, radiation therapy, and a bone marrow transplant before she was declared to be cancer-free. Feeling good enough to travel, she went on a three-month road trip to meet some of the people who wrote to her with support or asked questions from their own situations of grief or confinement.
