I'll be an amputee in 24 days

Is that word, "amputee," all right? Or is it like "lame" or "cripple"? I have no idea. Maybe I should be saying "one who has lost a limb" instead, but I'm one of those who tries to use fewer words rather than more. Oh well. When it's about you, you can say what you want. A few years ago I volunteered for an organization for the blind and all the blind people I knew there called themselves blind.
The wait at the cancer center yesterday was a long one, over two hours, and I'm a smart phone hold out, so I didn't have a screen to stare at like nearly everyone else does these days. So I sat up straight, closed my eyes and meditated for a bit.
Even though I knew the final test results would be bad, only confirming with lab results what the doctors and I already knew, there's always that little ray of hope you have that they'll come into the examining room with embarrassed smiles, smacking their foreheads and saying they goofed, that everything's fine, now get the heck out of here and back to your life!

A jetliner heads west on an East Coast winter evening.

That, of course, did not happen. My right leg will be amputated on February 26. My doctor said he could do it the nineteenth, but I demurred. The more time I have to mentally prepare, the better.
Here's the oddest thing about yesterday. I was certain that morning that when I got home after getting the news firmed up I'd pour myself a stiff drink. But I didn't. In fact, I didn't even have the seven-ounce beer with dinner I usually do. I also didn't take the anti-anxiety medication I've been taking for a few weeks, and I slept fairly well. 
I can speculate why this is true—knowing and accepting reduces stress, and all that—but really, I don't know why I feel this way. Your guess is as good as mine.