Mom’s Blog

Normal was a huge word for Joey from the beginning.  Joey just wanted everything to be the same but obviously that wasn’t going to be the way it was.  Even now when Joey describes his “fight” and “what kept him going” he responds that he just wants/wanted everything to be normal.  Well aside from him no longer going to school at a school, and his hair falling out, and his body becoming so thin and weak he couldn’t sit or walk for more than 30-40 minutes at a time, things were normal - but it was all a new normal.  There was no going back once the doctor said those 4 words “you son has  cancer.”  For a very long time I fought this new normal - Joey seemed to assimilate into this life fairly easily.  He accepted the fact that some things weren’t going to be like they were before but those that could stay the same absolutely would - it kept him going. It was his mission. Don’t stop, unless you can’t go anymore; play when you can, rest when you have to; deal with the doctors, hospital, drugs, chemo, nausea, machines when  you are there and then get outta there as soon as you can - back to the action of friends, family and school. It was almost like he had easily separated himself into two people - the cancer kid, the same ‘ole kid.  I resisted the new normal and grieved for the way things used to be - then it finally, after a very long time, started to make since.  Things weren’t necessarily changing, we were just growing.  Doing what you have to do to continue life - growing, ebb and flowing. Granted some of the growing was done in a very compressed amount of time but we were still we and us just a bit older and wiser. The new normal was inevitable with or without cancer - things will always change this time it was just more noticeable and in a compressed amount of time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 18:52 and is filed under Joey's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.