At the beginning of the pandemic, there was lots of talk about having to adjust to a “new” normal. It makes all the sense in the world as many of our lives were turned upside down and we had to learn to adjust on the fly. It’s been hard, exhausting and unrelenting as the Delta variant continues to spread and too many people remain unvaccinated. Our societal sense of the new normal continues to evolve.
As a couple confronting Metastatic Breast Cancer, it’s pretty much the same thing but with a twist. We had to change our lives with little warning. It’s scary, exhausting and unrelenting. We’ve talked a lot since Cassie’s diagnosis about our new normal. Here’s the twist though. It’s not one new normal, it’s many. How Cassie feels is constantly changing and it’s so unpredictable. At the beginning, when she first started treatment we assumed that how Cassie felt would track her medicine cycle of three weeks on and one week off. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. Sometimes her best week is indeed week four when she is off her meds but not always. Other times she actually feels the worst on week one and pretty good on week three. Huh? It makes it hard to predict and plan.
We’ve come to realize that for us normal is an illusion. Our normal is always new, always changing and the only certain thing about our normal is that it’s filled with uncertainty. It can be a tough way to live but we are also coming to see that you gain some freedom when you give up on the idea of “normal” and instead just embrace the day or week however it unfolds.
