So what’s next?

The question about what is next is very much an open one. I guess it is much easier for me to go over what is known. Over the next few weeks I will have my stem cells harvested and stored in the unlikely scenario that my leukemia returns. After that, I am gonna begin the maintenance part of my treatment. This likely involves me taking that drug ATRA that caused all that trouble for me in the beginning. Well, ‘caused’ isn’t the right word… I guess involved in all the trouble would be a better phrasing. But this time, as I take this medication, we are going to keep a very close eye on how my body reacts to it. I go into this stage of treatment with no anxiety or trepidation. I doubt that anything will happen, and even it should, I have all the confidence in myself and the doctors around me that we will get through them just as we did everything else.
In a way, the answers to what is next for me medically are the easy answer. Its what I have been doing for last 8 months now. But I am quickly running out of medical goals. Beyond them lies such a huge and vast unknown that used to be intimidating to me, but now, it really isn’t. I am going to wrap to the classes that I have left over from the spring semester and then polish up my resume and go out and look for some work. For what? I am not 100% sure. But I would like to see what is out there working in the cancer community, at the very least, as a volunteer. I have just gone through something that not everyone goes through. Might as share my experience and what I have learned with others that going down a road similar to the one that I went through.