I was crossing over into a new land, and with every step, I was feeling less like Suleika. As I was wheeled back to the oncology ward, I noticed that the sign outside my hospital room read S. On some level, I was starting to realize that the life I'd had before was shattered, the person I'd been buried. Up until this moment, with the exception of the mouth sores, my illness had been largely invisible. Protruding from a wound below my collarbone, I saw a plastic tube with three dangling lumens, like the tentacles of some abhorrent sea creature. JAOUAD: (Reading) When I woke up in the surgical recovery room, I looked down at my bloodied chest. I'd like to begin with you reading a paragraph from the first morning you entered the hospital in New York City on what you call a perfect spring morning. GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's heartbreaking to read, but you write beautifully about how cancer split your life essentially into two parts, you know, before and after. Suleika Jaouad spent the next few years being treated for cancer and documenting it in a series of blog posts and videos for a column in The New York Times and now in her memoir "Between Two Kingdoms." And she's here to talk about it. It was a time of hope and excitement until the itch got worse and turned into six-hour naps, mouth sores, weight loss and ultimately a diagnosis - leukemia with a 35% chance of survival. She'd just graduated from college, moved to France and fallen in love.
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