If I may speak of myself in the third person, Andrea in true fight or flight mode is a force of nature to behold. But some of you are new to this party, so consider yourself warned.

So yeah, worrying about a pending promotion or fitting into my "skinny" jeans or whether or not a boy would call me for a second date seems kind of dumb when I see it in my rear view.

I want to be happy for you. I want to support you. 

But the raw side of me... man, it's just pissed. And it's feeling really sorry me right now and really resentful of you. As I understand it, this is pretty normal for someone in my situation.

I've honestly spent the past 24 hours thinking that maybe I don't want to go through with the transplant, thinking maybe I should have just stayed dead on August 26, 2017. 

Did I think of Charon the Ferryman and payments due and the river Styx? Of course I did. Drama has never been in short supply in this particular brain, and the Greekier the better.

You get one life, standard issue. What you do with it is up to you.

Tomorrow, we take the first step towards finding out how much time I have left to do anything with mine.

Those 3 words were already so meaningful to me after the August "incident"... and the wonder that I was still here and still able to perform that song was never lost on me in those final moments before the confetti cannon fired and the proverbial curtain came down.

The weird part of this (as if it isn't all completely bizarre) is that as my mind was racing and repeating that word over and over I was horribly confused because I had no idea what that word meant.

It's a good thing we're leaving because it's supposed to start snowing soon, it will be dark in about an hour (thanks, #PNW), my parents are all alone at home (and based on my teen years, I wouldn't blame them for a little payback so who knows what they’re up to?)…

My heart has done a great many gymnastics over the course of the past 15 years and I've been this strangely lucky patient in that I've never felt it when it nails its dismount. 

It's such a luxury to have them here.

It's so hard to see this on their faces.

This is the night

when you can trust

that any direction

you go,

you will be walking

toward the dawn.

I never thought I'd think of that as a triumph (yaaaaay... breathing and housework??), but I'm so happy about it this morning! Hopefully this means that the diuretic is doing its thing and my new normal will be a bit easier than yesterday.

The absolute worst part of dying-- or more accurately, the worst part of sharing a body with a dying heart-- is that you actually FEEL like you're dying. There are moments when living inside of your own body feels so wrong and exhausting and awful that you find yourself simply making peace with your eventual death.

I followed him up about 15 minutes later once he was out of the shower and in bed and as I stopped at the top of the stairs to catch my breath, I could hear that he was listening to "Let It Be."

If you've heard my story, you likely heard me end it with an almost flippant "and if things do get bad enough, I will just get a new heart." 

But that was never real. 

That was never going to happen.