How do I navigate AML while maintaining good mental health?

How do I navigate AML while maintaining good mental health? It's difficult and there is too much insecurity about leukemia. It's the ability to cure it, the steps and the ever-changing sort of decision-making that goes into it. Transplant, no transplant, MRD, no MRD, what treatment? It is difficult to actually keep sanity and I'm honestly always amazed how patients go through this because as a physician it's sometimes difficult to even think that if I am in the opposite chair would I actually sit so calmly because knowing everything, these are difficult decisions that patients particularly for acute myeloid leukemia, they have to make decisions very fast, there is a sense of urgency to treatment and it's hard to keep mental strength. A few things that I usually always encourage is get family members involved right from the beginning. I actually most of the time when I discuss treatment options I insist on a family member being present because sometimes patients don't hear it. Like you're seeing it and they just don't, it's difficult to keep track with like so much information coming through, you always need a second ear to hear through it. A lot of family support is absolutely needed. I usually involve social workers at the beginning to sort of help support families. You have to make a lot of decisions like applying for disability, work leave, who's going to take care of the children. You know, there's just so many things that go into that and on top of it you get added the insecurity of whether I will be cured or not and that's very difficult. My advice generally is this might be a bit non, not traditional, but live in the short term. It's actually very difficult to look very far away because it's very overwhelming. To make your decisions, get family involved one bit at a time. Your first decision is to get diagnosed well, to understand what is the treatment options available, which trial should we enroll into, make that decision. Then get through that part. Then make the next decision. What is your day 15 marrow showing? Then what is your day 28 marrow showing? Should we transplant? Yes or not. It's actually better to compartmentalize your life into these little decision making and then eventually you'll get to the bigger picture and then you'll be done with treatment. It's very overwhelming when you start to think about the, I tend to give a long idea of what it's going to look at, but also compartmentalize it into let's just focus on getting into remission first. We'll get with whether to do a transplant or not later. It's better to feel confident that you're making the right decision at that point because every right decision along the point, that is the only thing you can control as a patient, that you're making the right decisions at that moment and you're hoping that all of those right decisions will eventually lead to a cure. That's the only way to sort of, and try not to get bogged down by numbers. Everybody wants to know what is the chance that I'm going to get cured? And that's why it's a very important question. It is also one of the most not helpful question because you don't know if you're going to fall into the bucket that's going to get cured or not. You can't control that. What you can control is your decisions that will lead to a better outcome and kind of focus on that rather than in the long run. This is also, we don't tell patients that they are cured until they hit that five year mark. At that time, you kind of have to just believe that this is going in the right direction. My doctor's keeping an eye on everything I am being well taken care of and just focus on being positive. Get through it one at a time and it'll get you there. If you try to think too long and too far away, then it bogs you down, mentally weakens you.