Open Heart by Jay Neugeboren Page B

problems.”
    The day after this, I take myself to my psychotherapist’s office for the first time in more than a year. “Going to session with D. v v helpful: a way of talking here that i cant quite do with friends,” I write. “And we agree that i will go for 6–8 weeks, and get some work doneon me—not my children, not Ellen, not etc…but me, and the elusiveness of what i have always desired so deeply: love and companionship.”
    The next day I travel down to New York City by train, where I meet with my editor and publicist and spend time with Eli. I also, this week, begin regularly telephoning Arthur, Jerry, and Phil.
    Two days later, upon my return to Northampton:
    V worried re my health. * V clear in the city—walking any distance in v cold weather, and the pain starts—usually between shoulder blades, and often, too, in chest… shit!
    I find myself having to go inside stores—or looking for pretexts to. Granted, it is bitter bitter cold, and etc…
    the usual from all—helfant, et al—is: get it checked out, which i am doing, but i am so fearful that i am just going to keel over, also: sense of aging—failing of powers, etc.
    I now write at greater and greater length in my journal, and do so not only first thing in the morning, but in the evening too. I keep itemizing all the things I have to be happy about, as if to convince myself there is no reason to be depressed, and I write about my talks with my friends (“all the buddies call back—sounds to [Phil] like exercise induced asthma, the stress test will show…also suggests chest xray [to check for dissection of aorta], and to call him after, sure you worry, he says, one day, you’re fine, and suddenly…”).
    I telephone Dr. Katz, who suggests I get some nitroglycerine, and that I take it when the pain comes and see if it stops the pain. He is now more inclined, given my descriptions, to suspect coronary disease, and he advises me to go easy between now (Tuesday evening) and Friday morning, when I am scheduled for the stress test.
    relieved, at first: to have somebody say—maybe it is your heart… and then, lying on floor and doing stretching exercises, i begin weeping, oh neugy, neugy, after all you have been thru, for this to happen, and now. I am sentimental, maudlin: imagine people saying—gee he was in such good shape, and what a good heart, and how he doted onhis children…and and: i just break down, imagining bypass surgery, a long illness, recovery, and who to care for me?
    During the three days between my call to Dr. Katz and the stress test, despite moving as fast as I can on long winter walks, I do not get anything resembling the kind of acute pain I’d been having, and when mild pain does come and I put a nitroglycerine pill under my tongue, it makes no discernible difference.
    In Brooklyn the previous week, however, walking with Eli near Prospect Park, the burning sensation in my back becomes so severe that I find frequent pretexts to stop so as to give myself respite from the pain—I remark on the architecture of some building, or an item in a store window, or somebody passing by, or I share a memory with Eli of what Brooklyn was like when I was growing up here.
    I read the sections on heart disease in Sherwin Nuland’s How We Die , and these are “encouraging, longterm,” I write. “It is natural for the system to begin to run down; and [what Rich has been telling me] does seem true: lots of things we can do for the heart to ameliorate problems, to prolong life, etc…a major area of progress, biomedical.”
    More sobering, though, is Nuland’s description of the very ruse I have been using to disguise my condition. Writing about the common pattern by which severe coronary disease manifests itself, Nuland describes a patient of his, and says that while he observed him and listened to him, he was reminded of a