Things have settled down for me. Do I feel like I've had a heart attack? They tell me I have and it nearly killed me. They say it's not even the first! I had the symptoms–chest pain, shortness of breath, and cold sweats, but I feel those things sometimes when I am in rhythm with Cayenne in our salsa dancing. But never have I felt that dreaded impending doom, the sort of thing involves a dystopian future of a totalitarian technocracy.

Regardless of my reflections, this is my reality. I am in a holding pattern, weeks away from surgery, gazing across the landscape of eternity.

I'm young in this space and relatively fit—there's reason to expect a positive outcome. Still, there's a path to mortality; my time on this Earth in this context doesn't seem as locked in...truthfully, have I ever had that? The older we get, there's a revelation of the fragility of life; when we're younger, it's all "hot fun in the summertime."

I abhor my recent glucose/ketone numbers. The recent additions of heavy whipping cream, cream cheese, and aspartame abominations were a fail, even in the case of the former two, it was in a controlled context as applied as a pre-measured oopsie cake. As to those sugar-like waters, who KNOWS what those chemicals do. And it violated my rule of consuming things that are sweet regardless as to printed calories. My own numbers reflect something screwy with it all. We just don't get somethin' for nothin'.

My numbers from the bloodwork yesterday were not a resounding success either, but mirrored my hospital values: heart failure impacts kidney health.