Good news and good news.

The good news is that I'm going to be a great aunt in April. My sister's son and his wife are my only chance to be an elder to any blood relation so this is a big deal for me. They came to visit a few weeks ago and brought their wedding album that they said they'd just gotten . . . two years after the wedding. So we went through the album page by page, photo by photo. I was looking up at one of them, talking, as I turned the last page and when I looked down, there was the black and white sonogram picture, with two little soft fuzzy onesies underneath it. I was nearly overcome. "Oh. Oh! Oh oh oh," I said, as the tears welled up in my eyes. It was nice to be told about such an event in person. When my nephew was in the works, I heard the news in roundabout fashion: my sister told my mother, who mentioned it offhandedly a week or so after the pregnancy's confirmation. When he was born, nobody told me for a few days either, and that only when I asked. So this felt special to me.

I've been up to the attic and have retrieved all my knitting supplies. One sweater finished, many blankets, thumbless mittens and little hats to go. And such cute little simple dresses to make! I haven't yet mentioned it's a little girl, have I? Her mother says she'll be as girly or not-girly as she wants to be. Me, I'll be dressing her in pink and ruffles as long as I can get away with it. 

And the other good news is that I finally got a phone call from the head of the hospital's cardiology department in response to my letter of complaint about that doctor at my stress test. He phoned my cell while I was driving to work on a Monday morning, and I pulled over and spoke with him for nearly a half hour. It seems that the woman who was so unprofessional with me is, in fact, a cardiologist, not simply a technician as somebody had suggested she might be, and I am not the first to complain about her behavior. I gather that the witchy woman will be called upon the carpet and disciplined in some manner. My caller also told me that the test was not so inconclusive as the witch would have had me believe, and after he gave me his interpretation of the results, I decided to have an angiogram. Which I did on December 5. 

And lo and behold, what did he find during the angiogram, but that my left anterior descending coronary artery (aka the widowmaker . . . horrors!) was 80%-90% blocked. 

~drawing from http://www.drarunmehra.com/anginapg.htm

He put in two stents . . . first a littler one and then a bigger one . . . something happened in there after the first one was put in place that made a second A Very Good Idea. The result is that my heart is now able to move the oxygenated blood back out instead of having it accumulate in there like a filling Zip-loc bag. It is a wonderful thing to be able to take a deep breath. It is a wonderful thing to not "lose my breath quickly." It is a miracle to breathe at will and not feel as if I'm climbing a ladder, reaching for my next breath . . . with that breath two rungs above my clawing hands. I'm awfully glad I wrote that letter of complaint.

So.
There you have it.
Good news and more good news.
I am a grateful woman.