This seems to be a term that has come into favor in our ever changing times. What is New Normal? It is similar to the term “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. Some thing has drastically changed in your life, could be a job loss, a new baby, a death in the family. Whatever has changed you can either mourn what is missing or pick yourself up by your boot straps and accept the “New Normal”. This world we live in now seems to need to put labels on all aspects of life. In generations that have had past hardships they have fallen all walks, but there just seemed to be a mentality of “ok where do we go from here”. Today’s world of instant gratification and immediate responses needs to justify these life changing events and put them in a nice neat box. Lee Woodruff the wife of Bob Woodruff anchor for ABC News that had a traumatic brain injury in Iraq speaks so eloquently about her life’s “New Normal” on her blog and in her books. This was my first exposure to “New Normal” terminology. (http://leewoodruff.com/blog/?m=200903)

My nephew lost his legs two years ago in Iraq and for the past two years my brother and our family have learned to live with the “New Normal” of our world. Life at Walter Reed, endless surgeries, therapy and uncertainty of what his world will look like.

Terminally ill patients and their families live each day with the uncertainty of their “New Normal”. This term can be tossed around in many arenas. But what exactly does it mean especially for the caregivers of the person affected. There can be a New Normal for a patient suffering a disease, but along with that the whole support system for that patient now has to deal with a new normal. It seems that the “New Normal” is simply a crossroads in life that requires a choice. How you see that choice is either the way it use to be or the New Normal of how it will have to be.

As a health care professional this phenomenon needs to be identified, discussed and a plan put in motion to embrace the “New Normal”. We are part of the support system for all of the endless possibilities of the life changing events that can lead to a “New Normal”, the challenge is how we deal with the people we come in contact with that are at these cross-roads.