Work

I'm ready for a new season to start. The weight is pretty low; I am seeing 65s on the scale in the morning and am hoping to see a 64 before leaving for the US next week. My anal running rhythm was broken apart for two weeks but last night I was back at my "usual" evening intervals.

To my surprise, I beat my record substantially on that loop, by about 20 seconds over 5 miles of intervals.

I am ready to race. Next up is a half marathon in three and a half weeks. I hesitate to put a goal time down yet but I am guessing between 1:15 and 1:16. If it's a fast course, I may dip below 1:15. My PR at 1:13.53 will certainly not move.

Work is getting to me a little bit. The other day, a lady came to the clinic as a new patient. She came referred with a new diagnosis of a slow-growing lymphoma. Another doctor had told her that she would take a few pills and be cured and I had the pleasure of telling her that it wasn't so. You are never cured of the slow-growing type lymphomas, unfortunately, and she didn't take the news well. I am getting sick of delivering bad news and pushing chemo on patients.

We have 15-minute slots. If it's a healthy breast cancer checkp-up, it's in-out, feel for lumps, order new meds, dictate, and you can barely do it in 15 minutes. If someone has an active malignant disease, or comes in for their first chemo, it would be inhuman to even try to complete a visit in 15 minutes. Sometimes, patients have non-cancer comlaints, which are sort of fun to deal with, but they take time. By the end of the day, I am over an hour behind. Then the patients are mad about having cancer and being late.

The good news is what makes my day. Some people with cancer, lymphoma especially comes to mind, are horribly ill when they come to us and are cured because of our wonder meds. It feels like I'm some kind of high priest, when I read the "clean" PET-CT to the patients. Their scans can go from lighting up like a Christmas tree to being completely normal.

The Girl is getting good at Danish. She starts work in a few weeks. Her running has been better, though. Her knees hurt for some reason, and she won't take the needed time off. This all stems back to the marathon almost two months ago. She ran that race in racing flats, in the cold, almost exclusively on roads. A week off would cure her, but she won't do it.