The New Normal

A lot has happened since my last post, which was over a year ago. Lorraine and I are having a baby girl! She will be arriving at the end of August. We have been very busy trying to get the house situated and getting ready for the next chapter in our lives. The question that came up a lot when we were first telling people that we are having a baby is if we had to use the sperm banking. Being that there might have been a chance that I wouldn’t have been able to have kids due to the chemotherapy. Well, it was all natural! It actually happened quicker than we thought it would. So, it all worked out! I am also training to run my first full marathon in October, which has been keeping me healthy.

I have been in remission for a 1 ½ years now and I am still going for checkups every three months. Every time I go I do a blood test and a CAT scan of my whole body. Six more months of this and then I will be going every six months instead of three months for checkups for the next three years. Since being in remission its hard not to think what if the cancer comes back and how would I deal with it. Any little thing that happens with my body, such as if I have body aches, tiredness or allergies I kind of freak out about it. A part of me thinks cancer again and I try to talk to myself and say everything is going to be o.k, which it has been. When doing stuff around the house I find myself doing multiple things all at once because I feel that what if something happens and I can’t accomplish things anymore. Especially with us having a baby and the new house it makes me think about that more and more. It does become stressful at times and I try to not think about the “what if” situations but man its tough. Its different nowadays in a sense that there was my life before the cancer and this is my life after cancer. It’s like a different kind of normal. Since being in remission two close people in my life had been diagnosed with cancer and I hear through different people how they know someone that was just diagnosed. Even though the treatments were very different than mine and no matter how advanced the cancer is you need to still try and beat it. I mean if you didn’t try and give it the best you can then everyone would wonder “what if”. I know it’s easier said then done but it can be done. Don’t give up the fight!

When the doctor finally said I was in remission my first question was do I need to be eating healthier now and exercising more? She said, “No, just do the things you did before”. This never made sense to me and always stuck in my head. I thought they would give me some kind of nutrition plan to follow or something. At the start of my remission I did try and be like my old self but every time I would eat a hamburger or have a beer I would think, “should I be eating this”? It would bug me so much that I am slowly getting rid of bad food in my diet and everything in moderation. I can see it would be very easy for someone to think I can eat, drink whatever I want as long as it makes me happy! I wonder though are you really happy? It’s hard to change eating habits and healthy habits but it’s possible. I guess if cancer did end up reoccurring I would want to say that I did all I could to prevent it. So, Lorraine and I started doing our own research on eating healthier foods and started eating more veggies, fruits and organic type foods. Try to stay clear of processed foods and eat more whole, raw food. We find that eating this way is not easy and its something to get used to. I do feel healthier than ever by changing our habits. Running and training for a marathon has also been my daily routine which has made me stronger and relieves the stress. People seem like now that I’m in remission I will be back to my old self like nothing happened. Which I wish was the case. The remission part of my cancer is a whole other beast that I’m still trying to tame. The new normal!