When I was in college, my parents moved to the midwest so my dad could pastor a church in Normal, Illinois.  Yup, that’s right, Normal.   Needless to say, my siblings and I were at no loss for stupid puns that all revolved around the punchline “getting back to Normal.” 

In 2006, when I was recovering from my mastectomy and still reeling from a cancer diagnosis, the word “normal” came up a lot.  Friends and family tried to compliment and encourage me by saying that I looked good, my reconstructed chest looked normal, they hoped I would recover soon so I could get back to normal, et cetera.

One morning shortly after I got out of the hospital, I opened another Get Well Soon card that used the word “normal,” and I fell to pieces.  My mom stopped scrambling eggs in the kitchen and came into the living room where I had dissolved into tears on the couch. 

“Normal!  Normal!”  I shouted.  “Why would I ever want to get back to normal?  Why would I want to go through the hell of biopsies and surgeries and bone scans and intractable pain just to end up where I was before all this started?”

My mom listened patiently while I continued to angrily ask rhetorical questions.   If you end up where you started, what’s the point of the journey?  If you fight an uphill battle, if you overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, if you run a life-threatening gauntlet and survive it, shouldn’t you end up at a new desntination?  Shouldn’t you be better?  Stronger?  Wiser?  At the very least, shouldn’t you and your new destination be different? 

Besides, how could you go through something so abnormal as being diagnosed with breast cancer out of the blue at the age of 27 and having permanently disfiguring surgery, and end up normal?  The idea of getting back to normal seemed to waste all the physical and emotional effort I spent to get through the horrific ordeal. 

So I set out to do everything not normal on purpose.  I wanted my post-cancer life to be as different as possible to reflect the irreversible physical, emotional and spiritual changes I had gone through. 

While I was still in the hospital, I had my friends bring me fashion magazines so I could pick a new hair style.  I bought new clothes at a consignment shop.  My former roommate got married, so I even moved to a new apartment and bought new furniture.  I went shopping at a different grocery store.  I bought coffee at a new coffee shop.  I walked a different way to work.

I even got angry at my boyfriend for suggesting we have dinner at what used to be one of my favorite restaurants.  “Why would I want to go there?”  I asked incredulously.  “I’ve been there before!”   After that episode, I bought a Zagat’s guide and left it in his glove compartment, and every time we went out to dinner I picked a new restaurant from the guide that neither of us had been to before. 

Instead of trying to get back to normal, I spent a year trying to move forward to a new and different place.

And then, almost exactly a year after my mastectomy, I was diagnosed with a recurrence of my cancer, and my world -and my body - fell apart. 

My right saline implant had to be removed so I could have radiation, which left me with a lopsided chest and an unweildly mastectomy bra stuffed with a heavy, rubbery breast prosthesis.  I couldn’t wear most of my dresses and tops because the straps and cups of the bra were too wide, and they showed through everything. 

I spent the year after chemo getting Herceptin infusions and taking antibiotics for a refractory case of pneumonia, working, and going out of my way to avoid the mall and all clothing stores.  Every time I walked through racks of clothes, I was reminded of how abnormal my chest was, and all the things I couldn’t wear.

This fall I finally finished my course of Herceptin. I finished my year of antibiotics.  And I had surgery to reconstruct the right side of my chest.  A week after my surgery, I was fitted for a normal bra.  The next day, I went clothes shopping with my mom, the first time I’d been clothes shopping in over a year. 

As I looked through racks and racks of adorable dresses and tops and realized that I could wear them now that I was in a normal bra, I was overwhelmed with relief and joy, and in the middle of the sweater section at the department store, I burst into tears.

Much to my surprise, I was overjoyed to be back to normal. 

Normal doesn’t seem like such a bad thing any more.  Normal means I no longer have to go to the treatment room every three weeks for  Herceptin infusion.  Normal means I don’t have to take three antibiotics a day.  Normal means I don’t have to stuff my bra before I leave the house.  Normal means I get to wear a V-neck top without thinking about it.  Normal means that I can finally wear a swimsuit.  Normal feels like me again. 

Normal feels good.

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