The day is nearly done. I found myself feeling anxious and wondering when I would hear from the new cardiac surgeon to scheduled a time to see me. My regular cardiac surgeon’s nurse said if I don’t hear from the new guy’s office by this afternoon to give her a call, so I did. She said she’d been in contact with the new guy’s office twice already, she’d sent over all my information, but the doc himself was not available and he had to be the one to pick a time for me. Finally, when the new guy’s office called she said, he will see me at 8:00 Friday morning. So that’s been settled. Unless he sees something horribly bad on Friday, I won’t be having surgery until Monday, I suppose, and probably not quite that soon. He does have other patients, after all.

Having sat around the clinic all day yesterday I feel like I have picked up a bit of a cold. This is not a good thing, and I hope I can shake it quickly. I don’t need or want a cold at this time in my life. Glad I’ve had my flu shot. It didn’t occur to me to wear a face mask yesterday, but I should have.

Various friends and acquaintances on Facebook (nurses and others) have continued to offer “helpful” information, which I’ve taken graciously but not altogether seriously. A few of the actual nurses who have dealt with this type of surgery, or similar, have suggested I could be in the hospital a week or more, perhaps several weeks depending on how quickly I recover. In preparation I have washed my pajama pants and nightshirts. And I have plenty of underpants. It occurs to me that if my belly is to be cut open and put back together, I probably will not want to mess with pulling t-shirts over my head, so I’m not sure what to do in that regard. I may have to find some button up pajama tops or something. Or just stayed wrapped in my bathrobe and shawls. I don’t know. I can’t afford to go buy special clothes just for this, so I’ll make do with what I have.

I do feel slightly less anxious this evening, knowing that the next step is in place (seeing the new surgeon). I plan to see my daughter this weekend to go over what will need to be done while I’m in the hospital (feed the cats, collect the mail, etc.), and to get her a key for the front door and show her how my door works (it’s weird and needs a little finesse sometimes).

I’ll find things tomorrow to continue making myself ready for whatever comes next. I am sooooo over being in limbo, and I’ve pretty much resigned myself to being in limbo until this is fixed and I can move forward. In some ways, my life was less stressful before I found out about the aneurysm. I knew about the diabetes, and I’m still learning how to work with that. My lower tract isn’t hurting ‘as much’ as it used to — I think partly because of all the water I’ve had to drink lately, and because I’m learning to adjust my food intake. I’m not sure about my afternoon finger-stick numbers (today was 267!!), so I’ll need to deal with that soon. I’ll see the endocrinologist next month to update my insulin dosages, and hopefully learn how to adjust day-by-day as necessary.

I’ve been avoiding any news shows recently. I know there is some bad shit happening around the world, and Trump is increasing his display of stupidity, but I have my own shit to be dealing with. I discovered that several years’ worth of “The Match Game” game show are on YouTube in chronological order, so I’ve let that run in the background during the day. Sometimes it is interesting, sometimes it’s just noise to keep me company. At the moment, it’s about as much thinking as I care to do.