Hey lookie, a new anxiety!

Wow - the past couple of days...

Yesterday, Monday, I went to see my primary care physician. It was good to see her. She is the person who heard the heart murmur back in late October and set my heart with feet on the path to surgery. I will always be grateful to her.

The nurse took my blood pressure - it was 148/80 something. Yikes! She waited a few minutes and tried again and it was down to 130/80 something. But that is still higher than the nice 112/whatever it was the last time I saw the cardiologist in December. True, I had walked to the appointment and up a long flight of stairs but it still started a whirlpool of anxiety swirling in my brain. I started worrying that my blood pressure was too high and that it would burst the stitches holding the aortic graft in place and that at any moment I was going to drop dead.

This morning I realized that I have to learn to trust the work of the surgeons, trust the stitches, trust the graft. It is one thing to sit at home with a nice calm heart beat and a nice low blood pressure. There is no anxiety in that. It is quite another to return to usual activities and wonder if the stitches will hold.

Then this afternoon, there was a moment of serendipity. I ran into one of the people from my surgical team. She also checked on me every day when I was in the hospital.

I greeted her. I didn't expect her to remember me. I mainly wanted to thank her for taking care of me. She asked what they had done for me. Then she remembered me sitting in the chair by the window and taking the pace maker leads out. She said it is always strange and good to see people feeling better. She took a peek at my scar and tole me to wear it proudly. She asked how I was feeling and how long it took for me to begin to feel more myself. I told her that I still had some pain (very, very mild) and that I was anxious about the stitches. She said the pain takes a long time to go away completely. As for the stitches, she said not to worry about them, that they were already healed in place. The anxiety dissipated a little bit.

I go in to see the cardiologist this coming Monday. I'm hopeful that I will find more reassurance there.