In 2005, Emporia State University junior Micia Amos was focused on working at her part-time job and earning her degree. Like many soon-to-be college graduates, she was wondering what she was supposed to do with the next phase of her life.

Becoming a cancer patient certainly never crossed her mind.


"My experience with cancer, and meeting all the people here who have inspired me, gave me a purpose in life. I want to use everything that's happened to me to and turn it into something positive to help others. My doctors and nurses have been my heroes, my role models. I want to give to others what they've given to me."
-Micia Amos
But that March, after months of battling extreme fatigue, nausea and other baffling symptoms, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

"My doctor told me I was done with school and work for the duration of my treatment," Micia said. "I remember I was more stunned about that than the diagnosis."

Micia started treatment at The University of Kansas Hospital literally hours after her doctors here confirmed her diagnosis. She underwent chemotherapy, then received an autologous stem cell transplant, in which her healthy stem cells were harvested and put back into her body.

During her extended hospital stay, Micia grew close to the people on her care team, and to the families of other patients on her floor. "Everyone was like friends and family to me. I never felt like I was a number or just another patient; I was Micia in Room 42."

In August 2005, Micia's leukemia went into remission. And though she'd missed nearly two semesters of school, she loaded up on enough course credits to graduate in May 2006 with her classmates.

Three months after graduation, and days shy of her one-year remission anniversary, she received devastating news: Her disease had returned.

"I talked to my care team who went through it with me the first time," she said. "I didn't want to go back through it again, but one of my nurses convinced me I could do it."

Micia underwent total body irradiation and intense chemotherapy before her allogeneic stem cell transplant, in which she received healthy stem cells from her brother. Her second round with the disease could have been the darkest time in her young life, were it not for a life-altering conversation with a woman Micia calls her angel.

"A nurse on my care team told me said she had been diagnosed with blood cancer when she was my age. She beat the disease, and she even ran a marathon to raise money to help find a cure," Micia said. "I knew at that moment I wanted to use my own experiences to help others, because I saw it could be done."

Her goal was to get healthy, go to school and become a nurse oncologist. "I found my purpose," she said. She convinced one of her nurses to pick up an application for The University of Kansas' School of Nursing and applied while she was still a patient.

Flash-forward to fall 2009. Micia is in remission, though she receives photophoresis therapy every other week to manage her graft-versus-host disease, a common complication of her allogeneic stem cell transplant. She works part-time at the cancer center —"KU's my home away from home" — and she's now in her second year as a nursing student, looking forward to her 2011 graduation.

And she's already thinking about the invite list to her Celebration of Life party.

"To me, cancer wasn't a death sentence, but a major life hurdle that I was going to jump," Micia said. "Because of the compassion and passion I saw in my doctors and nurses, I want to change at least one person's life the way they changed mine."