I exercise every day, my weight is good, I eat lots of fruits and veggies and I get to feel like 62 sounds weirdly old for one more week.

Someday I’m going to want to look back and see which day was the day, and it was today, so sorry for this but here goes.

It has been surprising to me how well I’ve held up despite all that intense sleep deprivation I’ve mentioned the last few days; for years now, once you get past two or maybe three nights’ worth my autoimmunity starts to take off. Not this time. Yay.

I hoped really hard that that would hold.

You know where this is heading. Except that I didn’t at all.

This morning started with a small tachycardia episode. I waited a bit, then got up and was doing the usual when suddenly I had to lie down quick before I might faint, only, too bad for you no can do not till this is done (opening the Eakins seal fast.) Ileostomies are a tyrant.

I managed to hold off long enough to get all that done and then after about five minutes in bed, got up again, doing okay now, and re-started my day: watching the clock as it slowly slowly stretched towards 9 a.m. when that office opened, at the speed of a cat that you wish would do something.

The new crew showed up at the door to start the power washing and prep work. Their boss was supposed to stop by with paint chips for me to choose from but I had to say, Sorry, I’m out of here.

They got me right in.

The cardiologist asked me about that big episode: when was it? How long was it?

October. Eleven pm to 3 a.m. I described the symptoms.

His eyes got big. He’d had no idea, and it confirmed for me that I should have gone in right after rather than relying on messages with his nurse playing telephone. I mean, I did, to get the heart monitor he ordered, but I didn’t see him and it wasn’t enough.

And how is it going now?

Mostly okay but the occasional yow. Nothing like that, though.

And then for all the times I’ve wished he would tell it to me straight, that he would scare me when I need to be scared rather than soothing me when that makes it all the easier for me to blow off symptoms as no big deal when they really do need to be paid attention to, he gave it to me straight, in the most soothing and calming way one could ask for because that’s how he rolls.

He drew me a heart. He told me the med I take to raise my blood pressure slows the heart up here and here in the upper chambers. Where the problem is now is down here in the lower. He debated doubling my dose.

I reminded him he’d tried that once (and I wasn’t sure I was going to live through the day. It was that bad.)

Right, that doesn’t work. So, and then he told me about another patient of his my age who’d been on the same med and then gone through the same new symptoms and then had to have this other med too and she’s been on both for twenty years now and she’s doing great!

I noted that he was not telling me the side effects. I also noted that he had previously told me all the others had more side effects than the one I was on, but I did not mention that because hey, if you have to you have to and just be glad there’s something they can do about it.

So tonight I am to start the new med.

I asked about pacemakers, having long thought that like my grandfather and I think my uncle that that’s where I was eventually heading.

Oh, that wouldn’t address it at all, he told me: the next step–

(he totally, utterly blew my mind)

–is a bypass.