Farewell symmetricalness! It was a great run.

103 degrees today. One-oh-three. Record-shattering temperatures. 103 would feel like 120 degrees for the rest of the country only because just like when it snows, Seattle is completely ill-equipped to handle this heat. We're having a heat wave, but we're also on a 3-month drought, breaking records from the late 1800's. This morning on KEXP two djs were talking about why it's not actually that hot when you compare this to the midwest or other places with hot summers, but again, it's because this city is not built for heat. John Richards said, "I don't even own a fan!" and Kevin Cole rebutted, "I don't even own shorts!" Forget air conditioning, no one has it and they've even designated public libraries as cool-safety-spots.

Everyone is asking how I feel about tomorrow's surgery. Besides that I cannot wait for this to finally be getting-it-on, the forecast for tomorrow is 100 degrees I am looking at this as 8-hours of crankin' hospital AC bliss. It's 91 outside as I write this at 10:30pm, and the inside of my house is finally cooling down to a balmy 87. I can't WAIT to be in that hospital tomorrow.

So, I thought this would be a great day to go for a run. Something has happened to my brain since having to focus on Lump. It's like I cannot handle any other brain activity. Bad decisions are made. Things get lost. Cell phones get dropped. Daily. (Ok, that has always happened to me I confess, but the frequency is definitely on the rise...) Last week before Sarah's wedding I showed up a day late for my hair appointment (but at the correct hour! I haven't totally lost it!) I saw this sign on a light pole around the corner from my house. I could completely relate. I feel I'm coming dangerously close to being in this person's shoes:


I had dinner Monday night with my friend Dr. Sanders who was giving me all kinds of medical and emotional advice. He told me he was taking me out to boost me up for the surgery and emphasized how important it is to eat like crazy before an operation. Why?, I asked. It gives you energy to fight the stress on the body, fills up your fat reserves, gets you through the long haul. "Imagine going in there all depleted?" Right. You don't have to tell me twice. I ate almost an entire giant eggplant stuffed with fava beans, pinenuts, and rabbit. And I have been on a eating spree since. (When the heat isn't suppressing a singular desire for only cold yogurt and blueberries.) With all this feeding, I woke up this morning craving a run. I haven't had time in the past few days nor has the heat been particularly inspiring. But this is it. I'm not sure how long it will be before they'll let me run again, so I felt I had to go.

Here are a few of the bad decisions. That I decided to go on a run in the first place. That I picked my 7-mile route instead of a shorter one. That it goes inland, instead of out along Puget Sound where it is far cooler from the cold salt water. And oh yeah, that of all the days before this one, today was going to break 100. (Good decision: I brought a water bottle for maybe the first time in my life.)

Half-way through the run I started recalling Sanders, "Imagine going in there all depleted?" Oops. That may be the very thing I was doing. At one point in the full sun I had sweat pouring off my elbows, like a gutter. The bandana on my head was doing nothing with perspiration control, it was so soaked I could have washed a car with it. I finally set up a system telling myself to run where there was sun and walk when there was shade. So now I know, that for a tree-hugging city, Seattle has surprisingly not so many trees. When sun comes, we want it. Well, we asked for it and are sure getting it in spades this year. I clung to shadows like a cat walking the perimeter of a lawn. I also realized how hilly my run is. So, even more than a run/walk, it was more like a run/mosey. And the whole time I was nervous I was jacking up my surgery tomorrow. I just. Wanted. To get. Home.

I did, but my normally 1 hour 15 min run went 40 minutes longer than usual -- which under normal conditions I could have run another 4 miles in that time. After grubbing around looking for these hydration tablets I bought on a whim once, I drank 64 oz of water with like 4 of those tablets fizzing away. Then kerplunked into an ice-cold bath. I swear you could hear sizzle and see steam. I submerged my head and turned off the icy faucet with my toe while still underwater. I didn't want to come up. My fingers were fingerling potato swollen. I get why they are named that. My face like a beet. My face turns red when I run in the winter, in the rain. I'd passed a guy struggling with energy to mow his lawn, but he took a long look at me and reached for his cell phone by instinct, I know he was contemplating calling 911 for a young woman having a heart attack from running like an idiot in the mid-day sun.

But other than that little self-imposed stupidness, I feel great. I've been spending the last two weeks getting ready for tomorrow. Making follow-up appointments. Deep cleaning. Paying bills, balancing checkbook. Doing yard work between heat spells. Replacing gunky 4-year-old makeup so I can try to pretend I look ok on pain medication. Food shopping. Laundry. Finding housemates for downstairs. Exercise. But not a lot of sleep.

Last night my amazing friend Monika came over. She works in HR for the King County Public Library system and deals with health insurance every day. We went through mounds of overwhelming (to me) paperwork, matching up statements with bills, checking all the charges, red-flagging weirdness. We got piles sorted out and organized into a thick 3-ring binder. She also told me to not open or pay any bills for the next two weeks. Just stick them all in an envelope and she'll come over and we'll go through all of them together. I can sleep tonight just knowing that is finally under control, I can't even describe the relief. She's Polish and speaks English fluently as a second language. She also speaks fluent Health Insurance and I will be forever indebted to her.

I have to get up at 4am. I need to check in at Overlake Hospital at 5:30 and go to the Nuclear Medicine Department to get some radioactive goo shot into my right boob which will be carried up into my armpit by lymphnodes so they can test them for cancer too. They cut into your armpit during the lumpectomy to do that. It's called a Sentinal Node Biopsy. After that I head down to surgery and let the lumpectomy begin! They also do a couple of other tests to see if the cancer has left the breast and invaded your system (so I will know about chemo after this.) It is supposed to be 1 1/2 -2 hours of operating and then I'm not clear how long I stay there. I think a few hours. It will be outpatient surgery and I will be kicked out of AC Eden at some point tomorrow.

Last night I went to bed with total delight. I had all the lights off, crawled in to read for a few minutes, clicked on the light and saw a ladybug on the wall next to my good-luck charms! Extra extra good stuff! There's two little figurines given to me by the wonderful Txell (pron, "Che") who was given them to her for a surgery she had this year. One of them is this flat, polished, carved, white stone in the shape of a female body. I press her right breast with my index finger every night for good luck.

The third object I have was given to me by my little 9-year-old friend, Ophelia. One day April pulled up in her mini-van as I was walking down the street and she yelled out the window, "Jenny! Ophelia has something she'd like to give you!" It was a fresh four-leafed clover. "Ophelia finds them all the time and she said to me, 'You know Mommy, Jenny needs this one a lot more than I do.' " I am not sure what is more astounding, the fairly deep understanding that little Ophelia has for a very adult situation... or the fact that she finds these four-leafed clovers all the time. I am SO jealous! I'm always on the look out for them and never find any. I pressed it between tracing paper and it joined the figurines. And last night the ladybug flew in for the party. Tomorrow my chest will be forever altered, but I know I am going to be ok.