Embracing a New Normal by Overcoming Feelings of Failure

As cancer patients, we often have to come to grips with “the new normal.” For us, it starts soon after diagnosis. Eventually, and probably, the sooner the better, we have to accept we have cancer and get on with it, not just treatment, but living.

Sure, we could say to ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have cancer?” But that doesn’t get us to where we want to be. It’s simply not helpful.

For five years after my initial diagnosis of multiple myeloma, I embraced my new normal. I was helped into it by my support group, and over the years, I think I’ve helped others come to terms with their new normal as well.

I was completely bought into my new normal. And then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t, and the reason, like a lot of things, was complicated.

You get what you measure

I’ve always been goal-oriented and metrics-driven, both in my professional and personal lives. I regularly set goals and measure my progress toward achievement. It’s served me well in the past. In the past few months, it hasn’t served me well in embracing the new normal.

In recovering from my November 2019 autologous stem cell transplant, I adopted walking as one of the foundational components of my physical conditioning program. A friend of mine introduced me to The 1,000-Mile Challenge, where the goal is to walk 1,000 miles during the course of the year—an average of 2.74 miles a day, each and every day.

In 2020, despite getting started in late February, I accomplished my goal. Then, I set out to better my goal, going further and faster, in 2021. Since then, it’s become a bit of an obsession, and one based on faulty logic all the way around.

An inconvenient truth

Sometime early in my formative years, I “learned” that a basic principle in biology was that an organism was either growing or dying. One or the other. I took it as an absolute truth.

It’s not, of course. Biologists and other scientists have told me that. I get it, intellectually. But, emotionally, I have trouble accepting it.

Look, I don’t want to die, and certainly not anytime soon. So, I push myself to grow, and physical growth—strength, stamina, and the like—is a big part of that.

I can measure my physical growth in many ways, and one way is with my walking, both distance and pace. Since I adopted The 1,000-Mile Challenge in 2020, I’ve walked further and faster each subsequent year. In 2023, I walked over 1,204 miles at a pace of 14:59 per mile.

This year, I started the year off fast. By May 29, I was well over 500 miles at a pace of 14:51. Then, I walked into, pardon the pun, a very real obstacle.

Another wrinkle, another new normal. On my daily walk on May 30, something felt...off. I couldn’t figure it out. I actually thought that maybe the sock and shoe on my left foot was too tight, so I sat on a curb and loosened them up. It didn’t really change anything, but I went on with my walk and sort of forgot about it.

Then, the next day, I felt that similar odd sensation again. My left leg just felt weird. My mind raced during my walk, and I wondered if maybe I had suffered a little stroke or something. It wasn’t until later in the day, while I was standing in a line, that a thought came over me: Foot Drop.

Sure enough, while standing, I couldn’t lift the ball of my left foot off the ground. That, of course, set my medical team and me off on a long, circuitous journey to determine the root cause of my newfound neurological deficit. It’s still ongoing, in fact.

An irrational, illogical fear of failing

Foot drop has changed the way I walk, literally. But, I’ve had trouble changing the way I walk, figuratively.

Physically, I can’t walk as fast as I can, and that’s probably a good thing, because there’s a very real trip risk with foot drop. Additionally, my gait has changed as my left foot now “slaps” at the ground, rather flat-footed. Any hopes of me completing The 1,000-Mile Challenge at a pace faster than 14:59 per mile has been extinguished. Plus, getting past 1,204 miles seems unrealistic.

Denying the newer new normal

I struggled to accept those facts. I struggled to embrace my new normal.

It’s not intellectually where I’ve struggled. It’s mentally and emotionally. Simply, I feel like I’m failing, and will, by the end of the year, have failed in the achievement of my goal. I know it’s irrational and illogical, and even borderline ridiculous, but it’s how I feel, even to a great extent now, almost three months after my new normal presented itself.

I know I’m not alone in this. For instance, I know of a long-distance runner who had an Achilles tendon injury that required him to walk down the stairs of his house backwards. Knowing better, he still continued to run. He ran and ran and ran until, eventually, he ruptured his Achilles tendon and couldn’t run. He knew better, but he kept running despite his initial injury.

I’ve done essentially the same thing over the past few months. I walked daily when my treatment allowed it. But, knowing my pace was suffering I would jog little portions of my daily route. Yeah, you read that correctly. A guy with a foot drop and a changed gait actually jogged and endangered himself to possible fall and greater injury so that his arbitrarily established goal might have a chance of being met.

Better late than never embracing the new normal

My left knee and my right ankle both hurt. It took that pain to finally wiggle through my thick head and resonate within me that I needed to change. That and, truthfully, typing this out. This article, I think, is the final hurdle I needed to leap over and allow me to embrace my new normal.

This week, I’ve walked using my head, not my heart. I haven’t run any steps, and I cut my walk short today because of my knee, knowing discretion is the better part of valor. Hopefully tomorrow it will feel better and I can go a little farther.

I don’t know what I was thinking or where I was going with my further and faster obsession. I’m 60-years old. Did I really believe I was going to be clipping off 14-minute miles many years down the road? What, was I training to compete in the race walking events in the Olympics?

I know, intellectually, I’m not a failure. I might not be there completely mentally and emotionally, but I’m at a much better place. Heck, I know I kick butt. I’m a 60-year old with multiple myeloma who undergoes active treatment and I GET THINGS DONE, more so now than I did before my diagnosis!

It took a surprisingly long time to embrace my new normal, despite having preached it for so many years. I will be better off for it. Shoot, I am better off for it.