An Appropriate Level of Worry

A few weeks ago, a friend told me she liked my blog posts and asked when the next was coming out. I told her when I was on the schedule, but admitted that I had no idea what I was going to write about. Nothing new is going on with Victor’s heart and unless there’s an impending doctor’s appointment (or blog deadline), it’s not something that comes up much in our daily lives.

“So write about that,” she said.

Aortic stenosis doesn’t come close to making the list of things that normally keep me up at night. Generally, it’s an abstract worry that is more pressing than a possible zombie apocalypse, but less worrying than bills and work projects.

Sometimes that makes me feel guilty. When he was younger, aortic stenosis was a huge part of Victor’s life thanks to surgeries and uncertainty of his prognosis. The physical and mental scars are still with him, but almost 20 years on with relatively good health, it doesn’t seem as immediate a worry as other issues. Some day Victor will need another heart surgery, but even that seems distant enough that I can lump it in with other long-off worries like my own health as I age.

With this known risk, sometimes I feel like I should worry more, but why? We’re doing what we can to keep the aortic stenosis in check and beyond that there’s really not a lot we can do. Instead of getting bogged down in worry, we’re just living our lives.