Suleika Jaouad, Reporting From the Front Lines of Leukemia

For 15 years, Suleika Jaouad has reported from the front lines of cancer treatment.

Jaouad, the Emmy-winning journalist and author of “Between Two Kingdoms” and “The Book of Alchemy,” received her first diagnosis of leukemia at the age of 22 and is now facing cancer for the third time in 15 years.

She recently delivered the keynote address at the inaugural Blood Cancer Heroes celebration, held in partnership with Blood Cancer United to honor those who make a profound impact on people living with leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma and myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs)/myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).

After the Blood Cancer Heroes event, she sat down for an interview with CURE.

Transcript

You began your writing and reporting career from a hospital bed at age 22. How has that formative experience shaped the way you engage with and connect to patients today?

When I graduated from college, I had dreams of becoming a war correspondent, but almost exactly a year to the date after I graduated, I found myself instead being admitted to the oncology unit for the first of many very long hospital stays. And obviously, I wasn't able to become a war correspondent in the way that I imagined. I wasn't allowed to leave my hospital room, let alone board a plane and report from some far-flung conflict zone.

In the course of keeping a journal and really reckoning not only with what was happening in my body and what it means to be a patient — but also, beyond just my own personal experience, what it means to be sick and to navigate a healthcare system that isn't always designed to make space for your whole self, where there are a lot of barriers to entry as a patient — whether financial, geographic, or needing access to a medication or treatment protocol that you can't obtain, there are often more questions than answers.

Although it wasn't anything like what I'd imagined, I decided that I was going to try reporting from the frontlines of my hospital bed, both about my own personal experience and using that as a launching pad to examine some of these bigger questions and more universal experiences of what it means to be sick.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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