November, the month we all start to feel the holidays creep in, the parties start, the snow starts trickling down, Christmas is everywhere, and the thought that another year has passed finally hits you.

Normally by this time, I would be finalizing the details of my work Christmas party, I would have chosen my gown for said event, baked dozens of holiday treats, planned my vacations for when it’s too cold to stay in Canada, and I would have looked at my planner and not known where am I possibly going to find the time to do anything except be this very normal busy person during the holiday season, as we all normally are.

Normal.

Such a painful word, I look at that word as I write it and I feel a resentment, a certain envy, and a bit of sadness.

As I await what’s to come, I can’t help but to be reminded of what used to be my normal. My busy planner is still full, but not with parties, work, and holidays. It is full with hospitals, tests, results, procedures, more tests, more doctors, alarms every couple hours for medication, and bed.

Normal is being twenty five and your biggest concern is when you’re going to find time to do all of your Christmas shopping. It’s getting upset that the venue you chose for the Christmas party changed your menu at the last minute. It is choosing which dress to wear to your work gala, spending all day finding the perfect shoes to match. It is setting daily goals to be a better version of yourself, it’s having a clear vision of exactly who you want to become and how you will get there, because you have your whole life ahead of you to achieve it. 

Normal is being twenty five and my biggest concern is whether or not I’m going to find the time to have a Christmas, if I will instead be locked away being pumped full of radioactive isotopes that will hopefully shrink the spreading cancer in my body, and what kind of impact this will have on my body that doesn’t seem capable of handling anymore pain. It’s getting upset that my cancer changed it’s mind and decided to spread even more making it more difficult to treat, more so than it already was. It is still setting daily goals to become a better version of myself, and attempt to use this unfortunate situation I am given to become a stronger person, it’s having a clear vision of who I want to be and how I will get there, because I know I may not have very much time to achieve this greatness, so every day has to count. 

Pheo cancer can take away my normal, but it still won’t take away my fabulous.