When we get diagnosed with cancer everything kind of gets turned upside down. Instantly, within the span of a sentence, what came to us as “normal” yesterday will not be our new normal.
For some of us we just kind of ignore the fact that we have been relocated to cancerworld and we carry on as if we are still traveling through our “regular life.” For some of us we look around and have to work through the shock of being instantly teleported to this new land.
And neither of those reactions, or any of the actions in between, are wrong.
We all adjust at different times and in different ways. The trick, may be, to be gentle with ourselves as we adjust to our new landscape. Whether we look out the window and say, “mostly the same as regular world I am just going to carry on as if I was still in regular world” or, “well THIS is a different landscape,” it is reasonable for us to have to adjust to this new world.
Some of us are going to figure out how to be able to take our work to our treatments.
Some of us are going to have to adjust to not being able to take our work into cancerworld at all.
The fact is that some of us are going to have to adjust to people who we counted as friends disappearing from our circle. And some of us may get annoyed that people are invading our space trying to be “helpful.”
Adjusting is normal. It is a standard part of this process. And if we resist adjusting instead of addressing it we can make our lives miserable. To make things easier you might want to make a list of things you have successfully adjusted. Or maybe even a list of things you have thought about. Give yourself as much credit as you can. Making room for adjustments will make the transition to cancerworld easier.
Although we all have to adjust to life. The adjustments necessary when we enter cancerworld may be more drastic.
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