The Song of the Cicadas - 7/3/22

I have always loved the sound of cicadas singing in the trees as they signal that Summer has arrived in the Midwest. As the alien-like creatures emerge from their long slumber underground and climb into the trees, the males sing to find a mate. The synchronized wave of their song's rise and fall is like a lullaby that can send me off to sleep. But now, that song has a different meaning to me. It takes me back to THAT NIGHT when I hear it or even just think about it.

It was a Thursday night in July. July 16th, 2020, to be exact. A typical hot, sticky summer night. Jack and Tim had headed off to a baseball game in Pacific for the evening. Mason was in the office playing on his Xbox with friends. I could hear him yell and cheer as he would win or beat someone at the game he was playing. I took some ME TIME that night, knowing we would have a weekend of baseball tournament games. I colored my hair like I did every other weekend to hide my gray roots that liked to make their presence known rather quickly, and then I took a shower. I didn't want to take the time to dry my hair, so I wrapped it in my white terry cloth head wrap and threw on some comfortable clothes, waiting to deal with it later.

At 8pm, Daisy's internal alarm clock was telling her that it was time to go for her walk. She was sitting in front of my chair, wagging her tail and looking at me with her big brown eyes, saying, "come on, Mom, let's go!" I quickly caved. Sliding my feet into my black flip-flops, I grabbed my phone and put it into my shorts pocket. I never took my phone with me when I walked, but that night, I did for some reason. I put Daisy's pink harness on her, clipped her leash, and off we went.

I remember feeling the heat rising off the concrete street as we stepped off the driveway. As we walked, I listened to the sound of cicadas singing their summertime lullaby. I noticed that sometimes their sound would be louder in yards with lots of towering oak trees; in others, it was more subdued. Clearly, they like the oak trees and preferred to gather there.

We continued our walk. Daisy stopped at every mailbox, every bush, and blade of grass that remotely smelled different just to check it out, even though we'd done the same route every evening for the past 3 years. We walked around the block, or the "did the D," as Jack & Mason called it. As we turned the corner to head home, my phone rang. I remember looking down at it and seeing the Caller ID display, "St. Louis Breast Center." I had preprogrammed it on my phone so that I wouldn't miss a call from them, and I was shocked that they were calling me after business hours were over. As I tried to juggle the phone in one hand and the leash in the other, I answered and said hello. The voice on the other end said, "Is this Elizabeth? This is Kathy from the Breast Center". I said, "yes, this is Libby; how are you?" She responded politely, "I'm okay. Is this a good time for you to talk?" I told her it was; I was just walking the dog. Kathy asked me if I wanted her to call me back. I said, "no, that's okay, I'm almost home."

I was in front of the house, almost to our mailbox, when she said, "I'm calling about the results of your biopsies that we did on Tuesday, and they are not good." As I took a step to walk up the driveway, I remember the feeling of my heart sinking into my stomach. My legs became weak, like they would give way from underneath me. I asked Kathy if she could wait a minute while I got into the house.

Daisy was panting as she gingerly walked up the driveway next to me. We stopped at the garage door, I unclipped her from her harness, and we went into the house. As I shut the door behind me, the sound of the cicada's lullaby ceased, and there was nothing but deafening silence. I sat down at my desk and took a deep breath. "Okay, I'm ready." She proceeded to say, "I'm going to tell you what it says, and then I will spell it out for you. Do you have something to write with?" "Yes," I said. "You have Invasive Ductal Carcinoma," and then she repeated it slowly so I could write it down. At that point, I became numb and asked, "Are you sure? Could it be incorrect?". She explained that the biopsy results from the six samples they took were consistent, and all showed malignancy.

A wave of fear washed over me. I felt sick to my stomach. I needed to talk to Tim and hear his voice. So I called his cell phone, and he answered. I told him we needed to talk and please walk somewhere private, away from the crowd at the baseball park. I immediately burst into tears and told him. I felt like I had dropped a bomb on him, and I know he felt something similar. Our lives had just changed and would never be the same.

Two months earlier, we lost his mom to metastatic lung cancer during COVID. It was so difficult to see such a vibrant and lively individual like his mom be taken from us by the disease. Now we had to worry about what would happen to ME. The next few days were spent making phone calls to arrange appointments with Surgeons, schedule additional imaging tests, and wait to find out exactly what we were dealing with.

Even though it was almost two years ago, I will NEVER forget that evening. One minute everything was fine. We were living life with no real worries, and in the matter of a phone call, that all changed. Just the other night, I stepped onto our porch to pick up a package that Amazon had delivered and paused before I went back inside. I heard that sound. The song of the cicadas. Summer has arrived here in the Midwest, and the anniversary of the day I heard the words "You have breast cancer." will be here soon too.