During a phase of hypochondria, I took myself to a cardiologist. My symptoms were a racing heart that I reasoned could be anxiety, or from running uphill in Central Park midsummer, or from I Was Dying. I wanted to rule out one of those. At Mount Sinai I met the most curious little cardiologist.
In the exam room, she listened to my heart like it was the first heart she had ever heard.
“Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?” I said.
“Your heart just skipped a beat,” she said, her eyebrows lifted: “Benign heart murmur. Pretty cool.”
Was this consummately professional-looking, middle-aged woman actually an intern? Shouldn’t she be, I don’t know, more bored by my heart? More bored by all hearts, at this point in her career?
She ordered an echocardiogram and the results showed a healthy cardiac muscle with flexible walls.
Back in her office now, the cardiologist took the opportunity of my well visit to instead discuss ... her love of comedy.😃
She leaned over her desk and told me, “We have so many very funny things we see, but only cardiologists would really get them. So, sometimes,” she smiled in private pleasure, “sometimes I imagine this gathering, like a conference of cardiologists, where we do funny skits just for one another.”
I wanted her to tell me some of the hilarious cardiology jokes she was harboring, but was sobered to realize that I’d need years of medical school, a residency, and several years in private practice just to understand one joke that, in all likelihood, I’d have a lot of notes for.
I chose instead to observe her joyful, silly spirit and that did make me laugh.
As I exited, she told me that she had recently attended a Bat Mitzvah where the floor of the party room was entirely filled with sand to make it like a beach. Was that, in my experience, typical of Bat Mitzvahs?
No, I told her, that was, in fact, quite ridiculous. And she smiled again, because everything in her life was a great adventure.
Her simple, goofy gratitude was contagious.
My heart felt better.
Only one cardiac patient per family
We laughed out loud! Loved it