I hate doctors. I'm terrified of them*. Wait: I hate to go to the doctor. A dentist, I can handle: I look forward to going to the dentist for an entire week beforehand just so that I can get shiny, happy teeth. But a doctor, at best, can tell you that you are healthy, and at worst that you have one of thousands of possible sicknesses. I don't like the probability.
*See also: flying, yellow and brown spotted orchids.

One of my friends from college, Susan, was just diagnosed with ovarian cancer and a rare form Leukemia. She is a lovely human being and very kind and is my age (late twenties) and fit. I can't put my head around it. I cannot help but question my own mortality and wonder how or why these things happen to healthy people at such a young age.

I guess it all started when I was a kid. I lost my dad to a ten year battle with multiple schlerosis while I was just out of college. I remember running around all over the Pacific Northwest from hospital to hospital...spinal taps and blood tests always accompanied by that smell: fear and cleaning products and mothballs maybe. The hardest thing watching my poor dad as a human pincushion, each notice from the doctor worse than the next...amazing that he remained so amazing until the very end. It was a ten year stretch that formed my family to who we are now and I think it has made us all better people. Unfortunately, it also left us all with a little bit of fear of going to the doctor.

I've got to go to the doctor in about 20 minutes now and it is just a routine athletic physical. Heartrate, bloodtest... They are also going to throw me on a treadmill and perhaps check my pulse so not exactly that scary dreaded doctor's visit...I've got that finger tingling, sweaty palm thing I get on airplanes though...

If anything, I need to remember that this is a good time to feel lucky to be healthy. Even if you have a sports-related injury, most runners are otherwise very healthy and thus very lucky. You've had a bad day? - you are still healthy and breathing. Why is it so hard to forget?

We are all racing to the end at our own pace and there is no better time than now to enjoy it all.