Normal???? I despise that word~

You know the sound that a record player needle makes when it scratches across the record, trying to grasp the melody that it lost, but just can not seem to catch it.  Well that is the sound that I heard when we were in the doctors office as he told my mother she had stage 3 cervical and ovarian cancer.  She had let it go and go due to being a single mom, working, taking care of 3 kids on the brink of the emotional, self centered teen years, trying to rebuild after our house burnt down the year before and trying to have a normal life herself.....what ever that may be for a single mom with no time for herself.

But that noise.  You want so badly for it to catch the song, the melody and if it worked out right, it would catch it at the beginning of your favorite line to sing along with.  But it did not. 

"Ms. Mackie, you have cancer".  I remember my mother sitting there very stoic.  Emotionless.  Stunned and trying to remain composed.  Statue like.  I knew what cancer was at that time, seeing many other family members have had it.  But I still did not comprehend the path it takes.  Maybe like the flu.  You would feel bad for a bit, but then after awhile, you would begin to return back to normal.  Normal?????? I despise that word~

There is nothing normal with a person after they have been diagnosed with cancer.  I can only speak vicariously through what my mother went through, but nothing in my life was ever normal.  Especially after that day.  I remember the doctor going through treatment options.  First there would be an operation.  Second that, if they did not get it all, radiation.  Radiation is a whole different ball game to say the least.  That would entail another operation to place a "seed" in the area close to were the cancer is.  Then six weeks of going to the hospital monday through friday to be exposed to a solid stream of radiation to try to kill the cancer.  If that did not work, then chemotherapy.  Not to mention.....my mother was a single mom with three children embarking on teenage waste land.

You see normal is lost to a cancer patient.  Their day comes to a screetching halt like the noise a needle makes trying to grasp a melody.  The melody that day ended.  The band broke up. The instruments began to collect dust.  The record player could not be fixed.  What awaited us was a life that was everything but normal.