Reflections

Essays, observations, anything that doesn’t fit neatly elsewhere.

  • When the Dam Leaks

    The new heart was beating. The surgery was done. By any external measure, the crisis had passed. What nobody tells you—what the discharge packet does not cover, what the follow-up schedule does not account for—is that the emotional accounting hasn’t even begun. Before the Transplant: The Exposure Starts Early The prednisone didn’t begin post-transplant. It…

  • Brain Over Heart

    The number 55 had been hanging there for years. Not a premonition in any mystical sense—a calculation. The kind that runs quietly in the background when you know your body well enough and have been paying attention long enough to see where the trajectory leads. When things started going downhill fast after my 55th birthday,…