I was given three months to live. Then I found calm in the West coast wildfires

The flames are unrelenting on the West Coast again this year. Water bombers sound like thunder, and although they are enormous, they fly as low as crop-dusters. When they lumber overhead, the vibration leaves a tingling sensation behind.

The first time our house burned down in the tiny community of Cobb, California, we glued ourselves to fire maps, refreshed images, looked for landmarks, and refreshed again. The Valley Fire started when someone’s spa created a spark and the whole mountain blew up, taking our house with it.

I was still skinny back then, weak from a year of chemo, surgery, and radiation. At 50, my grip on survival felt tenuous. All my life, I enjoyed robust health, but when my family and I returned home from six months in Costa Rica, my husband, Gary, found a lump in my breast. He called it a romance buster.

“What’s this?” he asked, guiding my fingers to the spot. It stopped me short.

“I’ll get it checked in the morning,” I said, and we fell into a fitful sleep.

The next day, my doctor told me not to worry about that lump, that “it didn’t meet the characteristics of cancer.” That didn’t sound right, so I scheduled a mammogram anyway. The first available appointment was on New Year’s Eve, and I grabbed it. Our rural hospital was deserted when I arrived, and the tech and I had the department to ourselves. My breast was pressed in a vice when she said something memorable from behind her screen.

“I know where you can get cheap chemo.”

Chemo? Me? It must be cancer.

The next morning, which was the first day of 2014, the Affordable Care Act kicked in, and the new law attached three extra digits to my health insurance policy. Those numbers indicated that it was noncompliant. No doctors would see me. Gary and I set up a war room in the kitchen and called every healthcare provider for miles. The answer was no.

Gary and I are entrepreneurs. We’ve started all sorts of businesses, everything from a flight school to a walnut farm. We used our skills until we finally found an oncologist who agreed to see me, but he said we had to pay cash. The office was dingy with one tired plant and neon lights flickering overhead. We peeled off $300, and the doctor told us I’d likely be dead in three months.

He said we couldn’t afford chemo and without insurance, no one would give it to me. “Best case,” he said, “you’ll end up with a Frankenboob.” I had triple-negative breast cancer, spread to other parts of my body, and when I did manage to get treatment, my prognosis was bleak.

When the Tubbs Fire blasted Santa Rosa two years later, it traveled 12 miles in three hours. Again we scrutinized screens, cringing when the fire got close and bargaining with God. That inferno consumed 8,000 structures, including our house.

The following year, it happened again. This time we watched flames sweep down the mountains that surround our home in the community of Upper Lake. Fire maps indicated that our town was gone. I thought about our house. The pencil holder my daughter made in third grade. The book of poems my mom found at a garage sale. A painting my husband bought in Kansas City, one I hated but later came to love. I didn’t want to lose any of it. Not again, I thought.

But the map was wrong, and we were spared.

Now, bombers are back. The air in Lake County, consistently rated the cleanest in the nation, is now thick with smoke. Ash clings to our tomato plants, and our sunsets are brilliant orange and hazy gloom. The petals on my roses are singed where embers landed, inches from our century-old wood frame house. It looks like someone flicked the fiery end of a cigarette over the top of my blossoms.

“Chemo’s going to burn holes in your tumor,” a nurse told me during treatment. “It’ll look like Swiss cheese.” I ran my thumb over the scorched pockmarks and thought of her.

My experience with cancer gave me a perspective that helps me endure these fires with a sense of calm. I still grieve the unbearable losses of property, dreams, and precious life. Like fire, cancer came with chaos and loss.

Back when my death seemed imminent, I knew with clarity what was important. It gave me a sneak preview of what was to come at the end of my life. I wasn’t going to be thinking about homes and treasures. I would see only the faces of the ones I loved.