Now that the angiogram showed that the blood cells in Steve’s heart have to take a number and get in line before they can make their way through his narrowed ventricles, we spent last week coming to grips with the fact that bypass surgery is in Steve’s future…his very near future.

When we were talking with the cardiologist immediately following the angiogram about scheduling his surgery, my thought was to find out how long we could delay it. Could it wait until after graduation – we have both a college and high school graduation in our family this May – but do it before his life insurance policy expires in September? (That’s a joke; we’re finding a good dose of gallows humor is creeping into our discussions about this.)

But after talking further, we arrived at the decision that the sooner the surgery could be scheduled, the better. He’s sort of a walking time bomb; he doesn’t want to be exploding at an inopportune time like when Jennifer Lynn’s name is called and she walks to the podium to get her diploma.

So the doctor’s scheduler got back to him with a date of April 18 which in terms of being able to prepare and work around client assignments and major events is the perfect date. Thank you God!

The 18^th also happens to be Good Friday, which will certainly have an additional significance in our household. Given that he’ll still be in the hospital on Sunday getting used to his squeaky clean arteries, I’m guessing that ham probably won’t be on the menu for Easter dinner.