Thanks for sharing your words of encouragement. I know I'm still in the wait phase - my cardiologist plans to hand me over to surgeon once it's 5 cm. In past years I did not worry about it too much (I still had hope it might not get bigger). Now there is a very clear trend of continued growth, so since my past scan it's been much harder to push it out of my mind. At my follow-up visits I asked my PCP and my cardiologist directly, "Based on the growth trend, it looks to me like surgery is almost certain, and could be as soon as 5 years - am I right?" (I'm very short - so my normal/healthy artery diameter would be on the smaller side of the scale). Both doctors agreed with me. Previous to this last scan I could just tell myself, it might never get too big, and if it does it might be more like 20 years down the road (still would be on the young side 20 years from now, but the distance in time helped me worry less). I hear about people having dissections at 4.5 and that scares me. But thank you for your encouragement.

I will say - I hate the term "watchful waiting." It feels helplessly passive - and a bit like I'm awaiting an apocalyptic event ;). I've decided to re-frame the phase by calling it "mindful preparation" instead. Somehow, I feel like it gives me a little bit of control back.