Your situation sounds similar to mine. I am just behind you in age and the symptoms (those that I can really feel) began to get more serious in the past year. Anyway, things do move fast when they start to move, don't they? Every time I start to talk myself out of surgery, I come back to what those specialists are seeing in the test results and the prognosis they give if I wait too long despite the comparative lack of symptoms. Why pay for expert advice and then ignore it? I have had the echos, the angios, the CT, and the face to face with the surgeon. Anyway, My date is set for early June. I am retired too. Not ready to hang it up yet either. ;-) Wish you well. Feel free to share or not your experience. I am not a real social person on forums, so it has taken awhile to work up the nerve to post here.