You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. What happens when you lose the life you imagined for yourself almost overnight?

Salaika Jouad's dreams shattered, just as her adult life was beginning. Now she's a writer, teacher, and activist who learned the hard way how to survive and thrive.

In this touching archive talk from TED 2019, she shares with us what almost dying taught her about living a meaningful life.

It was the spring of 2011, and as they like to say in commencement speeches,

I was getting ready to enter the real world.

I had recently graduated from college and moved to Paris to start my first job.

My dream was to become a war correspondent,

but the real world that I found took me

into a really different kind of conflict zone.

At 22 years old, I was diagnosed with leukemia.

The doctors told me and my parents point blank

that I had about a 35 percent chance of long-term survival.

I couldn't wrap my head around what that prognosis meant,

but I understood that the reality and the life I'd imagined for myself had shattered.

Overnight, I lost my job, my apartment, my independence,

and I became patient number 5-624.

Over the next four years of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant,

the hospital became my home, my bed, the place I lived 24-7.

Since it was unlikely that I'd ever get better,

I had to accept my new reality.

And I adapted.

I became fluent in medical ease,

...