Are you back to normal? Will I get back to normal? These are questions I have been asked many times and continue to ask myself. I’ve never been a fan of normal, fine or mediocre. But when you’ve suffered an injury or have been floored by something, these are natural questions to ask.

I found my own way after breaking my back. I was told that if I could make it to the front door of the hospital I could leave (I hadn’t been able to walk more than a flight of stairs in 4 weeks!).

What I failed to realise was:

– I would have to lever myself into the back of our car using the handle usually only used for the dry cleaning. In a fixed-back-and-neck brace this is no mean feat! 

– That upon getting home my broken ribs would burn without the morphine I had relied upon using up to 3 times a day. I wasn’t allowed to take any home as morphine cannot be prescribed in this country. 

– I would have to figure out how to get around, how much I could do, how much I would have to rely on others for. I would have to figure it out my own way. 

And although I was desperate to get back to ‘normal’, my normal had been doing headstands and the crab! I would get asked if I’d been back on a bike yet. I got on one just to say that I had. I wasn’t doing it for me, I was doing it to prove a point and for others to tick a box that I was functioning.

None of this mattered. I had been to the depths of vulnerability and managed to heal physically with very little instruction. But it had changed me. The way I thought, the way I felt. It had made me a little less hopeful and taken my gung-ho spirit. I was still me, just a cautious version it’s taken a decade to rediscover.

I don’t think any of us will be the same after going through this pandemic. It will be hard to go near big groups of people without feeling allergic to them.

What I think we should be asking is: what is MY new normal?

I don’t know who I am or who I’m going to be, but I’m willing to find out. Harriet ZM Thompson