Day 1340: What you need to know

What you need to know first about this post is that it was inspired by this patient publication from the Mayo Clinic, which I was reading yesterday:

What you need to know about me, right now, is:

1. I’m having open heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic later this month.
2. My only son is leaving for a five-year program at Edinburgh University in 10 days, and he wants to watch certain movies with me and my boyfriend Michael before he leaves.
3. I am a group therapist who recently facilitated two groups where the members chose to focus on the topics “nature” and “appreciation.”
4. I saw my cardiologist, Dr. Deeb Salem, yesterday, and he was very encouraging about my future health.
5. I am not particularly looking forward to open heart surgery, especially because it will definitely incapacitate me from blogging daily, as I have every day since January 2013.
6. I don’t like being incapacitated.
7. A person I greatly respect used the words “delightful,” “brilliant,” and “resilient” to describe me yesterday.
8. I’m very glad to know that I’m resilient, since that implies I will recover relatively quickly from open heart surgery.
9. I like cats.
10. I have to watch what I eat and avoid too much salt.
11. I have handwriting that can be difficult to read.
12. I took lots of other photos yesterday, if you need to know:

 

What you need to know is that I always try to make a grreat choice for music in my blog posts.

What you need to know is that when I  first understood, four months ago, that I needed to have heart valve replacement surgery performed at the Mayo Clinic, I created this YouTube video about that and shared it in a previous blog post:

You need to know that I’m more reconciled to heart valve replacement surgery today than I was when I first sang that song on May 31.

Anything you need to know or to express, here and now?

What you need to know is that I appreciate every one who helped me create today’s post and  you — of course! — no matter what you need to know, today.