Suleika Jaouad

After my diagnosis at age 22 with leukemia, the second piece of news I learned was that I would likely be infertile as a result of chemotherapy. It was a one-two punch that was my first indication that issues of cancer and sexual health are inextricably tied.

Just a few years ago, at the age of 22, I learned I had an aggressive form of leukemia. I needed intensive chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant to save my life. Back then, my doctors told me that I had a 35 percent chance of surviving my transplant.

When I was diagnosed with cancer at age 22, I learned just how much cancer affects families when it affects individuals.

I remember my first day of chemo as if it were yesterday, hanging up my favorite summer dress like an athlete retiring a jersey. Within a few weeks, my waist had shrunk to a double zero - the size it was when I was in the sixth grade. My cheek bones jutting out. Rings under my eyes. Skin the color of chalk.

In my darkest days in the oncology unit, I promised myself that if I ever got into remission one day, I would become a stronger, healthier and better version of my precancer self.

Today, my brother and I share almost identical DNA, the result of a successful bone marrow transplant I had last April using his healthy stem cells. But Adam and I couldn't be more different.

I'll never go so far to call cancer a gift. It's a really terrible disease. It's taken the lives of so many of my fellow friends in the oncology unit. But like any life-interrupted moment, there are silver linings.

I think another aspect of being a young adult with cancer is that most of your friends, hopefully, you know, have never had to experience life-threatening illnesses themselves.

To say that I'm healed, uh, would be to imply that there's an endpoint. And I think healing is something that we all do, that we'll all continually do, for the rest of our lives.

Cancer had given me a reverse celebrity status: all the attention for something you didn't want to be known for. I had crossed over into a new land, the land of Patient. And with every step I was feeling less like Suleika.

For cancer patients like me, and for others who suffer from chronic or life-threatening illnesses, natural disasters don't put health on the back burner.

The steep price tag of cancer treatment needs to continue to be a part of the national conversation, not just the patient-doctor one.

And there came a point in my treatment where I couldn't see that end in sight. And that was the most challenging, I think, to know how to kind of anchor yourself when you're swimming in a sea of uncertainty.

Survivorship comes with unspoken pressures, responsibilities and challenges. After all, what is the point of saving a life if the life isn't a meaningful one?

Cancer has made me mentally and spiritually stronger. But as my life starts to go back to normal, I find that some of my old, bad habits are still lurking in the shadows.

Looking back, I call the first month after my diagnosis 'the cancer bubble' because I wasn't showing obvious signs of my disease. I looked about the same - maybe a little more tired and pale than usual, but a stranger could never have guessed that I carried a secret, deep in my bones.

Today, at age 24, when my peers are dating, marrying and having children of their own, my cancer treatments are causing internal and external changes in my body that leave me feeling confused, vulnerable, frustrated - and verifiably unsexy.

My own cancer experience has taught me that the most comforting words from friends have often been both the simplest and the most honest.