"...thank you for the music, the songs i'm singing. thank you for all the joy they're bringing. who can live without it, i ask in all honesty? what would life be? without a song or a dance, what are we? so i say thank you for the music, for giving it to me. " Thank you for the music, by Abba

of course in this song,abba,  is thankful that they can sing so well. i am not able to sing very well now- i have good and bad voice days, along with salivary gland issues- still. yet i am so very thankful for the music that i hear. and i still sing in the car - on my way to and from work, when i am by myself. i sing with a joyful heart, if not always hitting the correct notes. i left a message on our answering machine for my husband yesterday. we happened to be working  different schedules and i wanted to tell him something. of course, my husband never checks our voicemail, so it was still on the machine when i got home. i listened to it and was shocked to hear my voice. o.k. i was having a bad voice day, but still- was the voice on the answering machine really me???

on another website that i occasionally read, someone had written an article about their "new normal". i wrote a similar article on that same topic  a couple of blogs ago. i promise that i did not read hers first! but i imagine that many, if not all, cancer patients have the same feeling that " we" do. we have new normals for ourselves. things will never be exactly the same, but that does not mean that they can not be good again. it is hard sometimes to adjust to what we have to do now- after having cancer. i used to be able to sing pretty well, but i am having to adjust to a new voice and the fact that i would embarrass myself if i sang out loud. i still love music dearly, and i enjoy listening to good music. that fact  will never change. but i am having a little difficulty adjusting to this new normal.

the thing that gets me through this challenge, is that i know i  had to have the surgery, that was  a certainty. my surgeon did a great job with what he had to work with- the cancer was invasive into the parathyroids, lymph nodes,and some of the surrounding tissues. i imagine that the vocal cords were pretty twisted too, and not in a fun way. so, he did his job, and i am here today. i am grateful to be here! i am trying not to whine too much about my singing/speaking changes. i am adjusting to my new normal. i do however,  wish that people would not ask me if i was sick sometimes- i sound like rachel ray with a very bad cold at times. but i just try to tell myself that squeaky, husky voices are " in" right now. lucky me!

and by golly, thyroid cancer did not affect my dancing! i am going to zumba tonight after a two week absence. ( we have been working non-stop on getting our house back together after the remodel). i will salsa my heart out tonight, and hopefully not be too sore tomorrow. i may not be able to sing very well, but i surely am the dancing queen!!