WOW! I can't believe this is happening to me. [View All]

[Th1onein]

I just don't know what to think of things, as they have played out.

Let me explain: I don't know how many of you have followed my previous posts, about my son's death, about my work on cystic fibrosis, about my paper being published, and all of that, but there has been a very nice turn of events in this work. I think it might be nice; it FEELS nice, at this point, but I am not sure of the rest of it yet.

I took a kind of chance, or a risk, for my basic premise of my model of the disease that interests me. I didn't know it, for a certainty, this basic premise, to be true, but it seemed infinitely logical to me that it was.true. So, I followed out the rest of the biochemistry, and I constructed a new model of the disease.

Today, I saw a piece of research, published in February of this year, that proved my basic premise.

I am very happy. I am extremely happy. Of course. I am now years, and even decades, ahead of anyone who has ever studied this disease. That sounds like a bold statement, but I've put in enough years to know that it's not. I've done good work. I am probably correct.

Where do I go from here, though? I kind of like my happy, secluded little niche, where I study, and I write to people, and they make all of the things happen, like publishing the paper, get done, and then I can study some more. And no one bothers me.

Is this thing going to catch me up, and consume me, so that I can't move on to anything else? It is beginning to feel like that, already. Like I cannot go back to my little niche. Or, maybe, I shouldn't?

I like it that my work, which I have strived at for eleven damned years, before publishing, is finally getting recognition, and that it is proving to be good work, but should I work on something new now, or follow through with the old, which is pretty much done, in terms of research? The old work feels comfortable, but it will put me in uncomfortable positions (such as giving a presentation before a conference of CF scientists), and the new work is not even defined yet, but it does offer my little niche, and people will leave me alone to do it.

I don't know what the fuck I should do. I'm lost here.

Melanie