I Have To Keep Telling Myself That The “New Normal” Isn’t The “Old Normal”

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Following Labor Day, school started in Minnesota this week and that means that my wife and I are back into the swing of things again full time. Not that I haven’t been there since the second week of August; not that she hasn’t been training up on new and updated classroom management and methodology…

But this past week was the first week with KIDS!

Two miles of walking a day is pretty much a regular form of exercise for her. But the beginning of the year is ALWAYS harder after a long summer of NOT walking two miles a day!

This fall was no exception – except that it was harder than ever.

Maybe it’s natural aging – even for me, my knees aren’t what they used to be and I have a knuckle or two that feel like they may have a touch of arthritis every once in a while. I can’t stand up without grunting a bit and I have to tell my two-year-old grandson to “slow down! Grandpa can’t keep up with you!” That seems pretty normal for me.

But the first two days of school were murder on my wife! Not joint pains like with me, but muscle aches and pains to a point where she had to take an unnatural number of over-the-counter pain killers. Not that she hasn’t had aches after a day’s hard work. She chases kindergartners from here to eternity and has been doing it for several years. Before that, she did daycare for 17 years. Certainly lots of aches and pains.

HOWEVER…I was talking to another friend of mine, a long-term survivor of breast cancer and she pointed out that while she was pretty sure she was all set to get right back into life and start swinging again, she discovered that while she felt better than she’d remembered feeling in a long time, the FACT was that she was recovering from a recent bout with cancer, surgery and chemotherapy.

The FACT, she discovered, is that a Human body doesn’t bounce back from an ordeal like that quickly. We’re not talking about a bad cold. We’re not talking about walking pneumonia. We’re not even talking about flat-out-on-your-back pneumonia.

We’re talking about a disease so invasive, it can grow to lethal proportions in less than twelve months. We’re talking about surgery as radical as the amputation of a limb. We’re talking about being injected with chemicals so dangerous the handlers must wear goggles, gloves, masks, booties, and dressing gowns lest any get on their skin and cause profound BLISTERING!

No one in their right mind would expect such a victim to recover from such treatment in less than a year. Yet your average breast cancer survivor EXPECTS THAT OF THEMSELVES! They fully expect to go back to a full training regimen training for the Olympics or the Tour de France; they expect to return to caring for children and home without missing a beat; they expect to take up the reigns at whatever career they had to slow down for, snap them and get back up to full speed yesterday!

So – to those of you supporting a wife, girlfriend, mother, grandmother or partner through breast cancer – stand tight beside them, ready to offer an elbow lift if they stumble or slow down and to continue to work beside them toward as complete a recovery as EACH PERSON is capable of. It’s hardly easy, but has proven to be another, newer role I’m growing into.

Image: http://www.wheatlandsalem.org/mediafiles/announcement-the-new-normal-project.jpg