a cup of trouble, anyone?

dear all,

would anyone like to borrow some trouble?

i had my echo at 8:30 this morning. i asked the tech how it looked and she gave me a thumbs up and a "looks good to me." so we go home and i plan to pay some bills, declutter my piles of paper, etc.

ring ring ring.

it is one of the cardiologists. he is talking fast, and i cannot understand the words.

so... my heart is pumping well. i still have my usual aortic regurgitation from my bum aortic valve. and then there was that other thing. oh what was it?

oh yeah! where the aorta attaches to the heart ("the aortic root"), well... it is kind of dilated. like in an aneurism. i become a regular chatty cathy -- i ask if this precludes me having the surgery on monday and he says, no, that will be fine. then he starts to yell at me about how i need to have echos regularly -- that they found this dilation back in 2003. i don't *remember* that! (after i hang up and am talking to a weeping fred, he reminds me -- my cardiologist told us that it wasn't as bad as it looked on the echo -- and that i did NOT need to foillow up with him anymore! fred remembers that vividly.)

anyway, it measures 4.65 centimeters. i ask what needs to be done about it -- and the guy fairly hoots! (he actually was very nice) "major open heart surgery," says he.

well, what kind of symptoms should i be looking out for? and i am getting a chill just typing his response.

"you won't have any symptoms."

as in, it blows, i die. (hence, the weeping fred.)

there must be something extremely wrong with my mental health, this all seems like a great big joke to me! whahaha! what's gonna happen next?

i told fred that this is definitely an incentive to live in the moment.

so -- i guess it is a good thing i don't have hypertension.

whahahahahahahahaha!

love,
prof