The Loss of Normal

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I have learned a lot in the last few weeks about ‘normal’ and the lack of it. I wrote a few weeks ago about how I had ’suddenly’ developed asthma. This has been a life changing experience — when you can’t breathe, everything that is important to you, everything you thought you knew about your body, suddenly changes. Breathing is so integral to life itself, that when you’re struggling to do it, you can’t think of much else.

Having said that, after several changes in medicine, my regime is finally working. My asthma is improving, and I actually am starting to feel that it’s coming under control.

I still struggle with stairs, mind you, but I’m back to walking again for exercise. (I can’t do Level 20, Random Hills on a treadmill anymore, but I can walk on fairly level ground — with, hey hey!, one set of stairs in the middle — at a brisk pace.) I’m increasing my time gradually, and today after walking I didn’t even feel the need for a recovery inhaler afterwards. So things are better.

But…

I feel the loss of ‘normal’. I’m of an age now where I kinda know what my body can do and what it can’t. I know how much I can push myself and what kind of recovery it will take afterwards.

Or at least I did.

I miss that. I know I don’t actually have a lot to complain about: I’m getting better, I’m under good care and things are most definitely improving.

But I can’t help feeling a tiny bit sorry for myself that, at least a part of the ‘me’ I knew is gone.