Halcyon Days

Autumn Leaves - John Everett Millais, 1856

Ok, fair warning, I'm feeling very introspective today.  Thinking on the meaning of things, time, and so forth.  I had my latest dose of Faslodex last week and that always leaves me feeling moody for a few days.  Please just take this for what it is, or please just feel free to skip this one and come back in a few days when I'm back to usual again.

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I'm living some halcyon days right now.

By all medical measures, I'm doing so well.  As I've mentioned before, my tumor markers continue to go down, my scans seem to be stable, I'm feeling pretty good, getting in my steps (just hit the 2 million mark this past week!), and even the pains in my hips have been there through 2 stable scans which I take to mean, whether they're arthritis or nerves or something else, at least they're not cancer.  Even the drug side effects are predictable and consistent, which makes them a lot less worrisome and a lot easier to deal through.

Halcyon days, indeed.

I have to confess, I needed to google that phrase to figure how how it's supposed to be spelled.  The way it sounded in my head, I had assumed it had something to do with Helios, the sun, but it doesn't really.  It's actually from an ancient Greek story about a husband who died at sea and wife who followed in grief, untli both were transformed into sea birds, halcyons--the 7 peaceful days were a gift her father, a god, gave her each year to lay her eggs on the beach.  I learned something new there.

I don't know where I first heard the phrase "halcyon days" (or read the phrase, really), but it always reminds me of some well loved Victorian children's books or something by Tennyson.  Knowing the story behind the phrase, I like it even better.  I like the idea that it's not just a label for sunshiney pleasant days between the darker times, but something more intentional than that.  An actual gift, a grace of peace to hold on to when the harder times come.  I like that halcyon days aren't just here and gone, but rather part of a cycle that will return when the time is right again.  It's still bittersweet, but beautiful, too.

I'm never sure just how to think about these kinds of days in my life.  I can remember very clearly thinking of that phrase, halcyon days, the summer my daughter turned one.  As I was watching her grow and change so quickly, I was acutely aware that those glorious summer days of spending our time together exploring and discovering couldn't last forever.  It's a notion that I think about often, as she and my stepkids grow older.  As my husband and I do, too.  Time continually moves on and, as it does, I'm usually left questioning if each lovely thing will be back again in one form or another, or if circumstances, time, and place will never quite fall together that way again and this time will actually be the last.  And at times like those, I'm usually left wondering why there would be such a craving for consistency in an ever changing world.  I honestly don't understand what God was thinking there.

I know I don't want to waste these halcyon days--here, now--worrying about the next storm, or at least worrying about what the future might bring.  I know with the cancer, like everything else, there's no real way to know if these particular days will be over in a few months or many years.  I know what the basic odds are, but have no way of knowing where my own life will fit in to them.  But I also know I don't want to look back at these times and regret that I spent so much of them worrying about what was next.

Occasionally I do get back to the mindset I want to be in, something like Matthew 6:27, "And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?"  But, lets be honest, it takes a lot of effort for me to get past the feeling in my gut that if I don't worry about things, if I let my guard down and just enjoy the present, then some crazy universal all powerful karma enforcer will notice what I'm doing and punish me for it.  I know, when it's down in a sentence like that it sounds pretty crazy, right? 

I think that's part of why I really like the Greek story behind the phrase "halcyon days." I like thinking that halcyon days aren't a final peace to think back on when the inevitable troubles come but part of a continuous cycle.  That each year for a certain time, the storms will subside, the gale winds will calm and roiling waves will settle, and the halcyon bird that was once Alcyone will have a time of peace to line her nest and lay her eggs before the storms rise up again.  Every year.  Always. Like a promise.

As I sit here now, typing a blog post, listening to the sound of my daughter's keyboard as she writes an essay for school, looking at the blessing of a young woman the little imp of that summer years ago has been growing up to become, just as her brothers and sister have done, seeing the sunshine streaming in the windows of our snug little home on this chilly autum day after another summer has come and gone, I try to stay present in the blessings I have here, now.  I try and trust that it's safe to enjoy them and not worry.  And I try to remember that I've had in my life many halcyon days. There have been other times of storms and shadows, to be sure, but those, too, have been followed by different kinds of halcyon days. 

I know at some point I will reach the end of my time here, the same way the ancient Greeks did, the way the author of the book of Matthew, the Victorians, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson himself did, immortal as some of their works may be.  I like to think of Alcyone's bird children, born of those halcyon days, carrying on through life in times of storms and back again to halcyon days of their own.  Its's a cycle that includes them but neither begins nor ends with them.  It sounds a little sad, but I find it comforting, and beautiful, too.  A never ending circle of halcyon days dating back to the ancients and leading forward through the future until kingdom come.  A promise bigger than all of us, carrying forward through the ages.  And a promise, which right now, that I am very blessed to be a part of.

What hope looks like around here

These are the seeds I gathered from my garden as the autumn frosts moved in.  I have them all bagged up, labeled, and ready to keep over winter so they'll be ready to pot up and grow for the garden in the spring.  There are 4 o'clock roots I'll store in the basement and some pinched off pieces heliotrope that are sitting in a vase of water trying to sprout roots.  Once they do, I'll plant them in pots on my sunniest window sill to grow long and spindly until spring temps and sunshine come around again.

Of scars and bone

From Katie Thamer Treherne's lovely
The Light Princess illustrations.

When I was in high school, I used my own money to sign myself up for some adult beginner ballet lessons.  For pretty much my entire childhood I had wanted to learn ballet--never mind that the '70's and '80's were an era where the ideals of girlhood were more about sassiness and tomboys (think Paper Moon and The Bad News Bears)--underneath my '70's and '80's approved tough-stuff exterior, I longed for pink slippers and tutus so badly I could practically taste it. 

As instructed, before my classes began, I had gone to a local ballet shop and was fitted for a pair of soft pink Capezio ballet slippers.  And because it's not like I just started being a dork when I turned 40, after I brought them home, I spent a fair amount of time looking them over carefully, noticing the little pleats under the toe, the soft sheen of the fabric binding where the cord threaded through, the feel of that buttery soft, gently pink leather.  And it fascinated me that one of the slippers had a little scar in the leather, a tiny curved line healed over from a little cut where the animal must have brushed against when it had still been alive.

I was reminded of that scar again talking to my oncologist this past visit.  It turns out that our bones also scar.  With bone mets, the whole idea of NED (No Evidence of Disease) is a bit of a misnomer.  Even if my cancer were to be completely wiped away, the evidence would still be there in the sclerotic areas (abnormally dense and irregularly formed bone growth) growing in where the lytic (bone destructive) lesions had been.  Even if we were to get to a state where my bones were completely free from cancer (granted, an unreasonably lofty goal at the moment), like that little scar near the toe of my ballet slipper, my bones, in life or years after I'm gone, would always have marks that tell the tale of what has happened with me and this cancer.

The confusing thing is, as it turns out, new active mets can also be sclerotic, so sclerotic spots aren't always a sign of healing.  They can be healed bone scars or they can be the bones interacting with active cancer.  So they can be a great sign or a depressing one, depending.

So, back to those scans, the news is that I have several brand new cancer-related sclerotic spots (dense areas of abnormal bone) on my lower spine, a previously unremarked upon vertebrae, my right pelvis (along with the long-known mets there), and on my formerly thought to be clean other femur.  Most of my mets were mostly lytic (the kind where the cancer eats away at the bone), but now there are also many little sclerotic spots but in new locations.

Since new active mets can be sclerotic, the scan report included text about the new spots saying, "It is unclear if this represents response to therapy or new metastatic disease."  That's the sticking point, the newly dense mets are either a sign that the meds are working well or a sign that they're starting to stop working well.  How's that for clarity?

My oncologist, looking at all of this within context of not just my CT scans but also my bone scans (among the usual bright bone spots there were also some notably less bright than before spots--which is what my girl-detective self thought I saw) and my general cancer history, was pleased.  She believes these are healing areas of bone-destructive mets, rather that new cancerous lesions of the abnormal bone building kind.  Meaning her assessment is that things are going well and some of the cancer is dying a bit (I think that means that the new ones are assumed to have been there but not really visible when they were just missing bone and not dense built up areas, but I clearly don't have an oncologist's training or knowledge about these things).  So this was good news, but the kind of good news that sort of leaves you not quite sure if you should really celebrate or maybe that might be a bit too hasty?

The unequivocally good news was that there was still no evidence of cancer spread to my organs. That was nice.  But, despite my oncologist's assessment, the bone thing was hard to feel easy about.  I felt like I should be thrilled at a good report and celebrate, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking, "Well, but what if it is spreading and my meds aren't working any more and...."

So mostly I was happy, but also holding my breath, not quite sure if I should relax for a few months of relief (at least until the next scans) or remain a little wary.

Fortunately, a few weeks later, I received my latest tumor marker results in the mail and those are down, too, which is good.  In fact, the number is now nearly half what it is in April and actually now just a few digits above the normal range.  Mentally, that news was the confirmation I needed to breathe again.  The markers match the good news side of the scans, so it seem I really am doing well right now, or at least signs are pointing that way.

For those of you keeping track at home, I now have a mix of sclerotic and lytic mets in my skull, neck bone, mid-spine, a rib, lower-spine, all across my pelvis, and on both femurs.  But, thankfully, it seems my meds are still fighting the good fight. Way to go, meds.

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And, while I won't publish this post until I read it over again tomorrow, right now as I type it's Saturday, November 8, so Happy International Day of Radiology, everyone!  It's held each year on the anniversary of the day Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered x-rays, which, using knowledge about them gained from Marie Curie's related work, allow us to keep tabs on my cancer and know whether or not my treatments are working without cutting me open, which I think is extremely miraculous.  Here's to you, Dr. Röntgen and Dr. Curie, well done!