Since starting treatment for what is now officially stage 3C colorectal cancer—I think that’s the first time I’ve written that out fully—I’ve met with a number of medical professionals. It’s sometimes hard to keep straight who I’ve talked to and what their roles are, but there are a few commonalities in their language, no matter their position.
First, they all talk about cancer as a battle, and since I’ve touched on that before, I’m going to leave it alone. Second, they all talk about the plan for curing this, which I really love. They rarely say “treat it,” which I have to assume comes from some kind of training on the psychology of language around cancer during “treatment.” That one doesn’t really bother me. It’s probably doing some good I’m too dense to realize.
But the third one—well, the third one is that when I talk about the issues I’m experiencing, the weird stuff—like how the port feels, how I can see the line running under my skin to my jugular vein, the diet I’m subjected to, the random cravings for bean and cheese tacos, or the odd things in the night that make me wonder if they’re cancer-related or just the result of sleeping weird for the last three hours—they all refer to it in some form as “the new normal.”
I kind of hate that.
I don’t want this to be the new normal. I want it to be a temporary abnormality—something that, by the end of the year, will be remembered only by the scar on my chest and the dark jokes my little brother keeps making daily. The only “new normal” I really want to adopt is using cancer as some form of excuse to get into—or out of—things for as long as I possibly can. Other than that, the new normal looks a hell of a lot like the old normal, just with my medical deductible reached a lot sooner in the year.
To prove that to myself this week—maybe also out of sheer obstinate stupidity—I did what I’d been wanting to do for weeks: I squatted heavy at the gym and sweated my ass off (no pun intended). Normal for me is boring, and that’s how I like it. It’s getting up early and taking Tugboat out for a walk, grabbing coffee on the way back, going to work, hitting the gym, meal prepping or ordering takeout, watching dumb TV, studying for grad school, and reading before bed.
The only thing that’s abnormal in that routine right now is the way I eat—thanks, mostly-liquid diet—and the fact that my range of motion at the gym is still a bit limited by my current surgical wound as it heals.
I sincerely hope that my new normal ends up looking a whole lot like my old normal. Which will probably have the side effect of making this blog kind of boring, filled with too many entries about CrossFit-style workouts I do with my friends.
Round 2 of chemo starts next Friday. So here’s to more normality…