The New Normal

I always look forward to the inevitable post-Halloween shakedown. 

For kids, it’s all about too much candy and being wired, then crashing for days. 

For me, it’s all about staying up way too late, putting away all the spooky food and stuff we served up to friends who dropped by, and then going over what everyone has been up to. 

This year, we even had to do the unthinkable - turn on the porch lights for several groups of trick-or-treaters who came by.  The little ones were terrified, but with the porch light on, they could see that everything was simply "pretend and for fun." Several even bravely touched the scary rubber masks that my daughter had so creatively back-lit for maximum youngster scare effect. 

Having fought cancer, it amazes me what I used to be afraid of - the dark, vampires, monsters that go bump in the night. Now? Not so much.

I’ve navigated completely black stairs during a 12-hour power outage (thank you, PG&E) and literally shrugged when I found out I had skin cancer not once, but - from the looks of the teeny, tiny, red splotch on my right arm that now refuses to heal - likely twice. There are worse things to deal with in this life. 

For me, the scariest place on earth is still the chemo room.  Having an abusive ex, I occasionally still experience nightmares of being trapped in either the chemo room, or, with a frankly horrific person from my past.  I am still not sure which is worse, but the chemo room probably wins by a hair - or lack thereof, so to speak - because you can divorce abusive men, but you can’t file for irreconcilable differences from cancer. 

With one, at least, there is a choice to stop the madness - you just need to find a lawyer, file the papers and blow up your life. Cancer, it turns out, is far more efficient.  Cancer blows up your life without the need for signatures and initials on every page, and nothing in triplicate.  No court dates, either.   Cancer is entirely efficient in its ability to completely take over your world.  And, when/if you emerge from the other side, cancer-free, you are still never the same.  You never get to “go back” and have the life you had before. Particularly, if you’ve fought breast cancer, your quality of life post-cancer is often significantly to severely compromised. 

I confess that I never understood what my BFF was talking about, being in pain from joint issues all the time.  I never got that until I fought cancer and spent the next two years without a pain-free day, always battling lymphedema and other forms of pain. My oncologist calls this phenomenon “the new normal.” 

Then, one day, it hit me. I was in pain every single day, and it was not easy to manage; it made me…different. Pain breaks you down mentally and beats you up in ways that only people in chronic pain can understand. 

I think I might have even formally apologized to my BFF, after it dawned on me that I had not been particularly sympathetic about her plight. Pain, it seems, is the great equalizer. At least, it was for me. I am now more sympathetic, more patient, more laid-back, when somebody tells me it hurts. 

So, as I head into the holiday season - the end of Halloween mentally kicks off the holidays for me - I realize my experiences can be what they once were, only they will also be more.  More poignant, more profound, more exhausting, and frankly, just more. 

But at least I will still will have them – experiences, that is.