If you have a strong body and good health you are indeed blessed.
I remember a day when I had good health and a strong body.
I remember being able to do whatever I wanted to do.
I remember hours spent playing basketball or softball.
I remember playing tackle football after church.
I remember walking for hours in the woods hunting deer, rabbits, or squirrels.
I remember hiking in the Huachuca Mountains.
I remember hiking to the top of Miller Peak.
I remember working long hours, with little sleep, and getting up and doing it all over again. And doing this for days and weeks on end.
I remember what it is to be a man’s man.
But, that is all I have these days……..just memories of a life that once was, a life I will never, ever have again.
Usually, at this point, someone is thinking, “I wonder if he has tried______________?”
Whatever you were going to put in the blank space, I have tried it. Diets. Foods. Drugs. Supplements. Tests.
Been there, done that.
I know you care and that’s why you send me the “new” information you have found. I know you want me to be in good health again.
But, it is not to be.
There is no fixing me.
God didn’t fix me, prayer didn’t fix me, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Bruce’s body back together again.
Life becomes one, slow, painful slide towards death.
Sometimes, I get periods of time where life flattens out. No new problems to deal with, no new adversity to fight.
These times become what I call The New Normal.
18 months ago, my right elbow started swelling and hurting. I went to the orthopedic doctor and he gave me a cortisone shot. The elbow problem went away.
About 9 months ago, my left elbow started swelling and hurting. I went to the orthopedic doctor just like before but this time the cortisone shot only lasted for a while and then the elbow began swelling and hurting again.
There isn’t anything structurally wrong with my left elbow. It just swells and hurts. It has been this way for months now.
My left elbow problem becomes a part of The New Normal.
Just one more thing to add to a long list of things I must deal with every day.
Think this is no big deal?
Add to the elbow problem, swollen and painful hands. Add to this chronic, never-far-from-me, lower back pain.
Then………think about wiping your ass.
A simple bodily function, yet it requires me to grit me teeth to stand the pain as I try to do what billions of people do every day.
The New Normal.
Family and friends rarely inquire these days about how I am doing. I understand. They see me handling The New Normal so they assume I am doing just fine. They have their own lives to live, their own problems.
Those of us who life which chronic illness and disability often feel like we are just another piece of furniture. While everyone else is busy living life to its fullest, we just try to get by til tomorrow. They get so used to use being right where we are that they forget about us. Often, we become invisible to those we love the most.
I have no answers to this problem. I don’t fault my family and friends. I have very little to offer them these days. I don’t contribute like they do. I am just taking up space. In the busy-ness of life family and friends assume that I will be here tomorrow. Just like every other day. I am right where I always am. A life that pretty much covers the distance from the bedroom, to the bathroom, to the Man Cave, and to the living room.
If I feel up to it my world expands to the yard or a short drive to a nearby town to shop or eat. These trips become harder and harder to do. When you can’t drive you have to rely on others to take you here and there and let’s face it………they have a life too. So…….for the most part, I suffer in quietness and loneliness. Maybe I should have been a hermit.
This is my New Normal.
I have no power to change any of this. All I can do is adjust to my New Normal.
One of the hardest things for someone with a chronic illness to do is to embrace their reality. We remember a past when things were different. We remember a different life. In many ways, chronic, debilitating illness has made us into a different person. Whoever we were before is long gone. We must accept who we are NOW.
Often, the great struggle is not with pain or lack of mobility. The biggest battleground is the mind. With our mind we can bring up memories of the past. With our mind we can survey the present. With our mind we can gaze into the future. Often, despair sets in.
It should come as no surprise that many people who have chronic, debilitating illness see a counselor on a regular basis. The mental toll such illness brings is overwhelming. Struggles over meaning and purpose become matters of life and death. The counselor often becomes the firewall between the sick person and the gun or pills. I know that is how it is for me.
For you who are healthy and full of vim and vigor this post probably sounds defeatist or even whiny. “I should be glad I am alive or that I have a spouse and children who love me,” some might say.
I wouldn’t argue these points but I do wonder how they might respond to life if they had to walk in my shoes for awhile?
Imagine losing your strength and vitality. Imagine losing the capacity to work and do things that give your life meaning and purpose. Imagine there never being a day or moment that you are not in pain. Imagine your life being reduced to sitting in a recliner and watching TV hours on end. Imagine not being able to drive and having to be driven everywhere you go. Imagine a life of walking with a cane or being wheeled around in a wheelchair. Imagine this is your life day in and day out. Imagine going to sleep only to wake up and start it all over again.
This is my New Normal.
I write this post not as a complaint or an attempt to elicit sympathy or understanding. I write this post to give voice to my fellow sufferers. I write so they can know that there is someone else who understands. Perhaps, united in our suffering, we will find the necessary strength to make it another day.
Pictures: Bitstrips and Lisa Copen
A powerful statement. My mother has new normals all the time. The most recent is a serious loss of vision in one eye. Not so much that it doesn’t see, but so much so that it bothers her all the time (it’s like seeing through a film over one eye). She stays active but also has fibromyalgia and most of the meds for it make her too sick to be used. So she suffers as she gets up and goes every day.
Your voice, through this blog, is a wonderful force in this world. You may not be contributing with your body, but, boy, are you contributing with your mind. I’m grateful for that!
Hi Bruce,
Maybe it’s time for another new experience for you–hit some mary jane for the pain……is it legal in OH?
Your last line says ‘untied in suffering’–I think you didn’t mean that, but it’s correct
Thanks for catching the typo.
It is not legal in Ohio. If it was, I would certainly be using it. It is legal in nearby Michigan.
Road trip!
I like to say, “Not complaining, just explaining”. Everyone wants to be understood
For what it’s worth Bruce, I am truly sorry to hear life is currently so difficult. I hope it gets better soon, one way or another, and I know that those words must seem empty, and I do wish I could do more than hope.
I’d say I would pray for you, but both of us know that wouldn’t do shit… I hope tomorrow is a better day.
This was very eloquent. At our house, we are pretty new to the husband has to be driven thing. My husband’s Parkinson’s makes his movement of his feet and legs lag behind the brain’s signals. The last time he drove into the city by himself, he got frightened and came home rather shaken. He hasn’t driven on the highway since. He is on a higher dose of meds, but we don’t know if they will help enough for him to do serious driving again or not. For now, I am the driver and realize what a gift it was all the years that he always drove if we went somewhere together. I didn’t appreciate what a gift it was to be able to look around and see something besides just following the road and avoiding trouble!
So when you have to be driven, try to enjoy getting to be the one to look around and see everything for a change; you’ve earned it. Might as well enjoy what there is to enjoy.
I’m always impressed by how productive you are in writing and being interactive, considering your physical pain. I don’t think anyone has a right to consider you a whiner or a complainer at all. God knows (well, actually I guess he doesn’t) that I’d be bitching my ass off a lot more if I was in your shoes.
Know that your mind is much appreciated by many strangers Bruce.
Sorry to read about your physical trials. Pretty unpleasant. At least one can derive a little cheer from what one observes in the social/economic/religious/political scene….. Oh wait!
Bruce, I think that you are not just taking up space. Over the years, you have certainly impacted my life in many ways and have caused me personally to think about my faith deeply, and to search inside of myself as a person, to examine my deepest convictions and inner motives. Even though we have not always agreed, and I know can offend and rub up against each other big time, I have taken many of your concerns with the institutional church seriously. You have been in my life for good.
No one can walk in your shoes, but as much as it’s possible, be encouraged that your life has purpose and meaning.
Dear Bruce,
When I read “The New Normal” it was like, “Wow, this will be me in a few years!” Dealing with diabetes, glaucoma, arthritis are some of the issues we might share. I still manage to get around and play some floor hockey, golf and ride a bike just to keep my sanity. I live alone and have but a couple of good friends and one extremely fantastic female friend who shares her life with me. My ex-wife became a born-again Christian when she lost her “common sense” and so here I am, living alone with my cat. Health is always on my mind and my kids live out of town so I don’t see them much. I was agnostic pretty much up to the time I split with my ex-wife. She had no interest in religion until one day “The God Virus” hit her. Being a real skeptic myself and somewhat educated as a retired teacher, I just could not understand her statement, “God is the most important thing in my life.” It was all down hill after that. No wonder I’ve become a militant atheist . Just thinking about the fact that she decided to worship an invisible, non-existent sky-daddy instead of caring about her family first, has blown my mind! I guess at 63 I’ll just have to learn to live with it and count on good friends to help me get through each day. Your website is much appreciated and thank you for being so open and honest about your own situation. It does make us ATHEISTS/AGNOSTICS feel like we are not alone or unique.
I’m mostly a lurker here, but I couldn’t stay quiet this time.
You are not just “taking up space” (just ask Polly for a second opinion!). Your blog, and your willingness to take your discussions to e-mail as well, have been a breath of fresh air to many of us who have left the One True Faith, and I wouldn’t be the least surprised if, in some dark night of someone’s soul, you have even saved a few lives. I can only imagine your pain of body (though, being a Depressive myself I have some inkling of the pain of mind), but please know that you are appreciated, admired, and, I’m sure, loved, by many people you’ve met only through this one narrow medium of communication. How much more so then your wife, your children, your grandchildren, your face-to-face friends? Wherever you may go, however slowly or swiftly you slide, you’re going to have a lot of people right there beside you for the entire trip.
Have tooled around your site as i said, but do not understand the order of the listing. Read the 16 of 16 but then see a __ of 50 series. Anyway this is a great read. Havng suffered mental illness for years I do not have much of good times to look back on other than my teens. Now 60, pensioned/disabilitly off I watch the cars drive by. Okay Question now .. oh wait… i am not sure what to ask. Guess I will keep reading and yes wake up in the middle of night wishing for forgiveness.