Some of you may remember my blog entry regarding the Title Nine catalog.  I couldn't figure out why I was even getting the thing, because I'm totally not the target demographic.  Title Nine has little biographical blurbs about women---presumably the type who patronize this sort of business---who's next adventure is set to include "hiking the Andes on my hands while simultaneously knitting alpaca wool socks for orphans with my feet."  In other words, it's not a catalog for slackers like me, and at the time I wrote that entry I scoffed to myself, "Yeah, right, these women don’t really exist!"

Well, guess what?  They do.  And one of them is in chemo with me.

Myra, who is at least 10 years older than me, is a triathlete.  How do I know?  Because that's one of the first things she told me when I met her a couple of months ago.  At that time, we'd both recently been diagnosed, but were a week apart in the treatment regimen.  Now, due to doctor's schedules and what-not, Myra is on the same schedule as I am.  I hadn't given her much thought until I walked in and saw her Tuesday.  Even then, I wasn't thinking about that whole triathlete thing.  That is, until she started talking about running 4 miles the day after treatment.  Say WHAT?! 

Now granted, the steroids they put in my IV drip usually keep me from sleeping Tuesday night, and make me kind of wired/tired on Wednesday, but holy cow!  I've joked about those steroids making me grow a beard and bench press the car---but I wasn't serious.  Myra, on the other hand, really IS doing this stuff.  (Okay, maybe not the beard part.) So, while I’m doing good to walk to the mailbox, Myra is running 4 miles. Not because she’s being chased by a giant boulder, a la Indiana Jones, but because she WANTS to, and she CAN. I, on the other hand, neither want to nor can, and couldn’t even if I did.