Glamour, Interrupted

How I Became the Best-Dressed Patient in Hollywood

Before Steven Cojocaru was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, he could never have imagined himself living anything other than a high-glam Hollywood lifestyle. A bon vivant on two coasts, he held jobs as both the red carpet guru for Entertainment Tonight and the fashion correspondent for the Today show, hauling his suitcase full of flat irons and designer boots from New York to Los Angeles and back again, every week. He was Cojo, professional glamour boy with a barbed tongue who went shopping with J.Lo and traded fashion tips with Gwyneth.

But a painful and ironically unglamorous reality would begin to form itself around his life, and Cojo found himself with a new Rolodex of A-List friends: The kidney team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

In a memoir that moves beyond the celebrity, Glamour, Interrupted is an inspiring and darkly humorous story about how, in the midst of a world obsessed with youth and beauty, Cojo survived what turned out to be the fight of his life. From drug-induced meltdowns to waking up in the hospital on life support, Cojo recounts his desperate hunt for a new kidney—after a failed transplant and months of dialysis—that ended with a twist of fate and forged an even stronger bond with his mother.

With a bit of eye cream, a little concealer, and just a touch of bronzer, he found a strength he didn't know he had, and used his unfaltering sense of humor to help him survive.