Crocus in the Snow

A few years ago, when we were living in Berlin and enjoying a particularly beautiful spring day, Brad and I had a conversation in which we ranked the different places we’ve lived by season. It really wasn’t hard to agree: Utah won summer, because it’s hot but not torturous and Utah summer nights are cool, grass-scented, and magical; Michigan won fall, because hello, all the gorgeous trees; Arizona won winter because it didn’t feel like winter at all; and Berlin won spring because Germany has the kind of springs found in fairy tales, with the flowers and trees spontaneously blooming next to cute cottages in consistent sunshine.

If I had to say which season is my favorite, I would be hard-pressed to answer. Each season has its own change in the air and parcel of memories. I feel like I can smell each different season, and when I do, I am taken back to Fourth of July parades or conference Sundays at my Grandma’s house or stiff school shoes and the crack of new textbooks. I associate so many positives with the different seasons, and I love them all.

Except one.

I hate winter.

I hate the cold, I hate wearing a bulky coat, I hate the endless cloudy days, and I really, really hate the snow. It’s messy and wet, and within a few hours of falling, it’s dirty and black where the plows have piled it up. My memories of winter are of white-knuckled driving in a storm, mopping my mudroom floor AGAIN because it’s covered in melted snow grunge, and trudging up a sledding hill with a runny nose and icicle feet, wondering how I let myself get talked into this. Winter is the one season I can’t wait to end.

Which is why I love crocuses.

They probably have crocuses in Utah, but I never noticed them until we moved to Michigan. It was there, as I powered through a particularly oppressive February (you haven’t done winter until you’ve done a Michigan winter), that I caught sight of something peeking through the snow in my front yard.

Yep, a crocus. Popping its little purple-tipped head up in a promise of spring.

Crocuses are funny. They appear when it’s still impossibly cold, but they are so cheerful and spring-timey, you can’t help but associate them with warm weather. They remind you that the earth is still alive underneath and spring is just around the corner. Forget that mangy groundhog—crocuses are the real hope. They are that “possible” in the “impossible.” The flower in the snow.

I’m not in Michigan anymore, and frankly, Texas winters are much more to my wimpy liking. Not a lot of snow, and to my knowledge, no crocuses. But yesterday, in my appointment with my oncologist, I got my own little flower in the snow.

Y’all know that when I was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma last September, scans showed lesions in my brain and liver. I’ve been doing radiation to fight the brain lesions and immunotherapy to attack everywhere else. It hasn’t been a picnic. The immunotherapy infusions did a number on my liver and I’m still recovering from side effects even though we stopped the treatment after only two sessions. But guess what?

It’s working!

My latest scan, done in February, shows NO LESIONS on my liver. I was cautiously optimistic when I first heard the news, not sure if I could trust the results of a CT scan when it took an MRI to find the liver lesions the first time. But my oncologist has assured me up one side and down the other that this is good news—VERY good news. My liver is still inflamed enough that we couldn’t do anything yet anyway, but we are now talking about NOT continuing the immunotherapy treatments when it’s better. 

He said it’s common for patients who experience extreme side-effects to have at least as good a response to the treatment as those who are able to finish it—the fact that my body freaked out so much with the drugs means they worked super well. My little revved-up immune cells went nuts, and they’re still working. As far as he’s concerned, we’ve done enough to fight the liver lesions and can go into “watch mode”, which means scans every three months for the next couple of years to make sure it’s really gone. Of course, it’s possible something will show up, but for now, I feel like my life is coming back.

A crocus in the snow.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean winter is over. Immunotherapy doesn’t necessarily work on brain lesions, and as of last month, I was still getting those. I had two zapped in February, with two more tiny ones we’re keeping an eye on. I’ll have a brain MRI in about a month, and if we see any new lesions then, it could change the no-immunotherapy plan (even though the treatment won’t help my brain, the presence of new “moles” means melanoma is still alive and kicking in my body, so we’ll have to fight it some more).

But for now, I’m cheering the little bloom daring to brave my cold winter. I really, really hope I don’t have to do any more infusions, and I’m thrilled that no matter what, I won’t have to deal with any debilitating treatments until after Jessica’s wedding. The next month can be all about her and my family and my happy, springtime life.

Thank you, you cute little crocus, for pushing out of the ground and promising more color and warmth. You just might be my favorite flower.

Girl in a bubble

What is it about bubbles that's so awesome? One of my first memories is of holding a hot pink bottle of bubbles and trying to fish the little wand thing out so I could try to blow some bubbles. I was probably two or three years old, and I can still feel the way the plastic rim cut into my too-short fingers and how slippery the elusive wand was as I grappled for it. I don't think I succeeded. It's fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure I had to wait for my mom to retrieve the wand, and I'm sure I wasn't able to blow a decent bubble. At that age, I basically spit air at the soap in the little circle--in fact, when I think of it, I can taste the soap from the wand, so I must've held it too close to my lips--and of course it sputtered into nothingness.

But then my mom re-dipped it and blew, and...magic.

The big ones were the best, all glistening and wobbly as they floated by. My brother always wanted to pop them immediately, which made my little self SO MAD because I wanted to see how long they would last. I imagined them floating up, up, up into the sky, catching the sunshine and lasting forever. Rarely did they survive for more than a few feet--inevitably, the bubble would pop--and I'd turn to my mom to blow another. I was sure the next one would last.

Right now, I feel like I'm in a bubble. At my last doctor's appointment, the labs on my liver showed it was almost back to normal, and every day since then I have been less achy and much less tired so I think the inflammation is gone.  I've also been off the steroids for a week, so all the fun side-effects--raging hunger, inability to sleep, tremors in my hands, and sky-high blood sugars--are slowing down.

I feel like myself again. Like my old non-sick, non-cancery self.

It's magic.

I know I have lesions in my brain that will need to be addressed, but nothing is going to happen on that until April-ish. Treatment on my liver lesions continues to be on pause--I will meet with my oncologist in a couple of weeks to discuss what to do from here, since the immunotherapy I started in December is no longer an option. So for right now, I'm living in a beautiful, shimmering bubble in which nothing hurts, nothing makes me want to throw up, I am taking no drugs, and there are no test results I have to worry about.

I'm just floating along, enjoying the sunshine...

...and pretending it will never pop.