Born nearly blind with cataracts, her family foreigners in Vietnam, there were no doctors to correct Julie’s sight. Her spirit-worshipping grandmother commanded Julie be taken to an herbalist who would concoct a potion to make her sleep…forever. Fortunately the herbalist refused to cooperate.
So it truly was a miracle that her family fled to America and Julie was able to get surgery that preserved some of her sight. Still legally blind, she felt she had to prove that she was just as smart and could do anything the sighted kids could. She traveled the world, studied, and eventually graduated from Harvard Law School. Julie even met the love of her life and lived the dream she never thought would come true; she married and had children.
Stage IV colon cancer came worse than a punch in the gut on a trip across the country for a family wedding. In a whirlwind of pain and emotions Julie experienced crisis with unfamiliar doctors, panic sparked by what her symptoms could foretell, transcontinental consultations with medical professionals, and urgent directives to transfer to a different hospital to have emergency surgery. In Julie’s mind, this is where her miracle life began to unwind.
Julie began keeping a blog, somewhat introspective, painfully honest, and real. As her followers grew, Random House took note and offered to edit the blog into Julie’s memoir. Thus the book begins, “If you are here, then I am not, but it’s OK.”
Available in Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, and Paperback.