Essays, observations, anything that doesn’t fit neatly elsewhere.
The heart was beating, the surgery was done, and by every external measure the crisis had passed. What the discharge packet doesn’t cover is that the emotional accounting hasn’t started yet—and that the prednisone exposure began weeks before the transplant did.
The number 55 had been hanging there for years. Not a premonition—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 line goes. When things fell apart after that birthday, it didn’t surprise me.
More blood moving, more oxygen reaching places that had been running on fumes for years. I hadn’t known how far gone I was until the contrast arrived. Then, lying in the ICU with nothing to do but think, the questions started accumulating.
