My Last Fireflies

Our creek, "Little River."  We're on the right, neighbors are on the left.

Our house sits strong and solidly on a hill that terraces down in slow, grassy folds into a creek bed. Across the creek, trees climb the rocky bank up into our friendly neighbors' lot.

From my bedroom window, I see their trees stretching up as they have done since before any of us arrived here. Sycamores, pin oaks, white oaks, pines.
From my pillow, I look out onto summer nights filled with thousands of fireflies blinking in those trees with the randomness of nature that electric Christmas lights hope to, but never quite, capture.

It's October now, and the nights are getting colder. No frosts yet. But I looked out last night from my bed and the fireflies had gone.  When did they go?  While I was in a fever for two weeks?  Or while I carelessly enjoyed good health before, and forgot to appreciate them daily? 
And so the joy of my summer nights has gone for the year.     But I don't have another year.  
So I'll never get to see pretty fireflies again.    Ever in my life.    Never again.

How sad is THAT?

Well actually, once I stopped the wallowing-in-self-pity mode, It was OK. 
My sister Laurie has Thai friends reading this blog, and maybe they've never SEEN a firefly (well actually fireflies might be a national Thailand pest but how would an American ever know?)  :)
I remember age 9 in England, we used all of our childish resources to try to explain "snow" to our new non-English-speaking Egyptian classmate. We all adored him. But one day he never came back to school. Did he go back to Egypt? Even the school administrators were at a loss. He was transferred to a different school or home or country. And I always wondered. . . after all of that, did he ever really believe in snow?

Fireflies and creeks and trees and snow and countries I've never seen are the loves in life. And once we get into the emotional loves, it's all so much more. And then we go spiritual. Wow.

After half a year of fighting to get my clinical trial drugs (nivolumab and ipilimumab), they didn't work. No regrets. . . it was a GREAT choice. They just didn't work for me (they are curing thousands of other people).  My tumors are growing, my CA-125 (cancer count) is growing.  So I stopped taking the meds.

104.9 F = 40.5 C  Wow!

The side effects after the last treatment kicked my tail.  My super-high fever had me into the hospital for a few days.
But then I was admitted to the lovely University of Virginia Hospital Cancer Ward, with one super-trained nurse and one assistant per 4 sleepy patients.  Nice.

So now I'm off the clinical trial meds, and detoxing. And also getting off the steroids (yucky prednisone that I actually needed to quiet odd things down a little). Ugh.

But every day that I have less chemicals going into me, I become more myself again.

I can see why some people refuse cancer treatments now. The physical and emotional and mental effects are hard-going.  You spend months in sickness and mood fluctuations and spacey lack of comprehension and often without fluid thought.  Personally, I'll keep plugging on with meds, and just deal with the rest.  But I completely understand the merits of the opposite perspective now.

I'm not a pack-rat at all, but my original vinyl record collection is still pristine! My lovely husband gave me my dream present--and I can use it anywhere. . . including in my bedroom once I can only dance in bed! LOVE IT!

I have another treatment option coming up. It's the last bullet in my GYN Oncologist's arsenal.  Hormone therapy.  It worked for a few of my doctor's low-grade ovarian cancer patients. As director of Gyn Onc for UVA, my doctor has hundreds of patients.  "A couple of successes"  means I have a what, 1 in 400 chance of responding?  And that's all she has left to offer.  It's not her fault.  They haven't cured cancer yet.

I got the prescription, but we're wiser now. I'll start when I'm ready, once I feel I've detoxed off the other stuff, once I'm braced for a potentially mood-altering drug.  After all, at this point, a week or two won't make a difference. 

Cool, Huh? Global population 750.

So before I start the next regimen, I'm having my annual GOAT PARTY!!  Endangered heritage breed, national event (well, our numbers are so small we can only really BE national, yeah?), and I'll be OFF any chemo drugs and into my old self!!  Everyone is showing up because they know I'm terminal so it's the last party.  Even my professional Kentucky BBQ guy is showing up to man the grill  (he hasn't had goats in 5 years!)  It will be loads of fun, and I'll be chemo drug-free and back into healthy hyper mode.  

But there is a certain calm I have now that I never had before, a peaceful acceptance that comes from terminal cancer.

Once the sun goes down and the party keeps going until midnight as usual, nobody will pause to wonder if snow is believable to young Egyptians.   
No one but me will notice that there aren't any fireflies in attendance -- no one could imagine that while they're chatting and laughing at a table of wine, I'm mourning the beautiful green-flashing fireflies as a treasure that I'll never see again.

But I think I'm OK with that now.